“It’s different from the dramas,” Hemiola said dolefully. “At least then the music tells you when the bad guys are about to sneak up on you.”
“In the dramas, we’d be the bad guys,” 1491625 pointed out.
“Not helping,” Cheris said.
“Someone has to be a realist,” 1491625 said.
Hemiola was silently grateful for 1491625’s callousness. They’d never be friends, exactly, but the other servitor’s matter-of-factness helped it focus on the stakes. “I can do it,” Hemiola said.
Cheris smiled at it and took up her exercise regimen. Hemiola knew enough about humans to recognize that Cheris was in excellent condition. Her devotion to staying fit reassured it. In the meantime, it distracted itself by reviewing footage of assassination attempts from its least favorite dramas and replacing the existing scores (and sometimes the dialogue) with its own creations.
Afterwards, Hemiola wondered what had led Cheris to choose this particular day, as opposed to another, for her assassination attempt. The hexarchate and its successor states were about dates, times, irreplaceable moments. Accustomed to small but distinctly ritualized celebrations, if you could call the hexarch’s observances that, Hemiola didn’t know what to make of what they were doing here. At the time, however, Hemiola was merely grateful that the wait was over.
“It’s time,” Cheris said as she unwebbed herself. The suit she pulled out this time was not the one she had worn into Ayong Primary. This one was Kel infantry issue, less sleek, and once she had finished the checks and suited up, it made her resemble a predatory insect. The suit was dull gray in color, even the hands. It was then that Hemiola realized that it had never seen Cheris in Kel gloves, or even the gray gloves of seconded officers. Jedao had, in his various guises, affected the antiquated fingerless gloves, even though Kujen had provided him with an elaborate and not at all regulation wardrobe.
Hemiola blinked its acquiescence. If they survived, it could ask Cheris about the gloves later: surely a thorough rejection of the Kel, for all that they claimed her still. The official records still listed her name as Kel Cheris.
Together they entered the airlock. Cheris selected one of the burrower eggs, then loaded it into the gear that would induce its hatching and attach it to the Revenant. The process seemed to take forever. In reality, only eight minutes and five seconds elapsed before the mechanism’s interface indicated that the burrower had emerged from the egg.
Hemiola imagined that it heard a soft gnawing. Pure imagination, of course. Cheris had assured it that no vibrations would pass from the burrower to the needlemoth, or indeed to the Revenant itself.
After another eleven minutes, more or less, Cheris signed that the burrower had completed its job and that it had exuded a blister over the entry point so as to prevent the breach from leaking atmosphere into raw vacuum. They squeezed into the blister, which had two compartments that cycled similarly to an airlock. It was a tight fit for Cheris, who was by no means large. Hemiola, rather smaller, had no trouble hovering through the pulsing passage.
Hemiola listened intently for signs of activity in their vicinity. It wouldn’t do for them to emerge into the command moth right in front of some trigger-happy Kel. While it would have liked the certainty of active scan, it didn’t dare alert any of the command moth’s servitors to their presence; other servitors would find it suspicious if a stranger-servitor showed up flinging tendrils of scan around.
Once the burrower had finished the tedious business of chewing its way through the Revenant’s hull, they emerged in a storage room full of cleaning supplies. All well and good. There had always existed the small chance that some tumble of variable layout would land them instead in the dining hall for high table or some much-frequented gymnasium. But they’d inferred what they could of the duty roster—not difficult, considering the Kel fondness for routines—and hoped that no one of high rank would decide to take a jaunt that necessitated turning the moth topsy-turvy.
Cheris landed lightly on her feet and scanned their surroundings. She whispered a command using the codes that Brezan had obtained from Protector-General Inesser. Her suit darkened to Kel black with gold seams, the equivalent of full formal. Most importantly, it displayed the insignia of a high general.
“This feels like cheating,” Cheris had remarked to Hemiola when she first explained the scheme to it, “but it doesn’t need to work for long. They’ll cashier me right after the op, anyway.”
Cheris gestured for Hemiola to proceed. It damped its lights, partly nerves, partly an irrational conviction that shining them would draw attention. From now on, Hemiola was responsible for leading Cheris to the desired target without interruptions.
Hemiola shuddered inside when the door to the storage room whooshed shut behind them. No turning back.
Under other circumstances, Hemiola would have paused to admire Kel decor, which it had previously only known through dramas. Cheris scarcely glanced at the elaborate tapestries and paintings. Then again, there was no reason she should; as a former Kel, she would have seen her fill of them in the past.
Hemiola had never before appreciated how vast a warmoth was. Studying the schematics was one thing; hovering through the hallways, increasingly worried that someone would evade passive scan and ambush them, was another. Cheris walked briskly, but did not run. Hemiola wished it could urge her to run, except that would make her look suspicious.
After several long hallways, two lifts, and a small eternity of glaring ashhawk paintings, they reached a row of offices. Hemiola confirmed that no one lurked inside the one they wanted, which belonged to the executive officer. It conveyed this information to Cheris in Simplified Machine Universal, reflecting that it was just as well that she was fluent in its language.
They waited for another small eternity. Hemiola stilled itself, trying to stay alert without giving way to its anxiety. I am not cut out to be a special operative, it decided. Although it consoled itself that someday this would make an excellent tale to tell Sieve and Rhombus, who wouldn’t believe a word of it.
As luck would have it, the executive officer didn’t come alone. Hemiola alerted Cheris that two humans were approaching. No servitors. Unbidden, it risked a moment’s active scan. “One Kel,” it said in hurried flashes, “one Nirai.”
Cheris flattened herself against the wall, coiled and ready. When the two humans rounded the corner, she lashed out and struck the Nirai. He went down in a tangle of limbs.
Critically, the executive officer, a tall, broad Kel woman, had frozen for a second. That was long enough for Cheris to shove her up against the wall in some kind of joint lock. “Listen,” Cheris said, her voice muffled by her helmet. “I’m here by authority of Protector-General Kel Inesser, to whom you owe your true allegiance.”
The woman’s eyes flicked down to Cheris’s high general insignia, flicked back up to her face. “I’m listening. Sir.”
Hemiola could tell from Cheris’s body language that she was satisfied, although she had not let down her guard either. Presumably that reluctant “sir” was a positive sign.
“I need you to give my servitor companion access to the grid,” Cheris said, “and to speak no word of our presence. Acknowledge.”
Peculiarly, the woman grinned. “Acknowledged. I think we had better take this to my office before someone happens across poor Wennon here.”