Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)(13)

After Jedao’s takeover, then, it was blackly hilarious to regain consciousness to an argument over whether or not he was a Kel.

“—anyone can put on black gloves and a uniform if they’re willing to get shot over it,” a high-pitched voice was saying. “Look, just wait until we figure out where the hell a working gene scanner is. I don’t know what possessed Hachej to take the good one apart just because it made that weird intermittent gleeping noise.”

Brezan attempted to blink or open his eyes. His eyelids might as well have been chained down. He had some understanding that he was still in the sleeper unit that they had stuffed him into on Jedao’s orders. The prep had been rushed, not that he remembered much besides fragmentary cold and the sense that someone was playing music out of reach. Experimentally, he tried to move his hands. That didn’t work either.

The darkness behind his eyelids was suffocating, and he almost missed what the second, much deeper voice was saying. “—rotten luck. A mutiny, really?”

“Or maybe it was Kel Command with some convoluted new plan. You know how it goes,” said the first voice.

This reminded Brezan that he had a warning to convey to Kel Command, except his head was swimming and he couldn’t seem to stop hyperventilating.

“—this one here. Honestly, if they were going to do prep this shoddy, why not just shoot the lot?”

Brezan wouldn’t have minded the answer to that question himself. He screwed his eyelids open. Light filtered dimly into the sleeper, and he could see one of the medics as a reticulated blur. He attempted to knock, although he wasn’t sure he succeeded in moving his arm.

After an interminable interval, the medic opened the sleeper. Brezan would have cringed from the sudden brightness if he’d had any coordination. Speaking was equally hopeless.

“Look at the insignia,” the man said. “That’s some kind of officer, isn’t it?”

Whoever the medics were, they clearly weren’t Kel.

“That’s a lieutenant colonel, you dimwit.” The owner of the first voice sounded like they wished their companion were something smarter, like a slime mold. “But any bored kid these days can steal and hack a Kel uniform.”

Brezan opened his mouth to object to this. Instead, he went into a painful coughing fit. His mouth tasted like copper. After that, he couldn’t tell whether he was breathing, which was so distracting that he didn’t notice the servitors extracting him to a pallet.

“—clearly what happened,” the first voice said. “I mean, there’s no way they’d simply dump a crashhawk. The Kel shoot crashhawks who get caught at it. He’s got to be some kind of impostor. Although I’m not sure why they wouldn’t shoot an impostor, either. I get why they have to return the Nirai and so on to their own people, but this one’s a mystery. The whole thing is so random. It must have been one hell of a mutiny. I would have bought tickets.”

“It wasn’t a fucking mutiny,” Brezan said before he realized he had his voice back. It sounded as though someone had taken a rasp to it, but it was better than nothing.

The two medics peered down at him with great interest. The first speaker was small and pale and had deeply cynical eyes. The second was fidgeting with his stylus. “Yeah?” he said. “What did happen? No one so far has a coherent story.”

Brezan regrouped enough to register that neither medic was dressed in faction colors of any sort. He couldn’t blurt the truth out to civilians. Another coughing fit prevented him from answering in any case.

“He’s going to be just as hysterical as the others,” the first medic said. “Sedate him and let the servitors sort it out.”

Between wheezes, Brezan said, “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Kel Brezan. I need to get to a secured terminal.”

“He sounds like he means it,” the second medic said as though Brezan weren’t right there.

“What’s he going to do to us, pull rank? I mean, doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that we’re 73% through decanting these losers and this is the only hawk—I don’t mean officer, I mean any Kel at all—in the whole lot? Damned suspicious if you ask me.”

Brezan was ready to throttle them both, but in his current condition that was a wretched idea. Fine. If the first medic had some conspiracy theory—not all that unreasonable, given the evidence—he might as well play to it.

“All right, you have me,” he said, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt. “They booted me because I’m working for the Shuos. I suggest you let me report before I kill you with my belt buckle.” Stupid threat, but he couldn’t think of a better one.

The medics exchanged glances. “I told you it had to be something like that,” the first medic said to the second, eyes alight. To Brezan: “You’re in bad shape. I’ll have to monitor you while you make the call.”

They were fishing for gossip. Shit. If he tried to tell the truth to Kel Command, besides the security leak, the medic might jab him full of sedatives for being delusional.

It was hard to think clearly, and when he tried to examine things too closely, he started seeing double. But he had to convey his warning. “Send a message to Shuos Zehun with as much priority as you can pile on the thing, from Rhezny Brezan of the Swanknot swarm,” he said. Zehun must ignore half the junk addressed to them, but there was a chance they might remember him from that cadet exercise years ago. How much was safe to reveal, though? Over a channel whose security he couldn’t guarantee? “Say I came across someone else who knows how to beat Exercise Purple 53 and that I’d like to discuss it with them.”