Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)(21)

“Pull back Tactical Five and fill our null for us while you’re at it. Just in case the Hafn main swarm is much faster or nearer than we reckoned on.”

“Of course, sir.”

Three hours and twelve minutes passed before the next call. “General Jedao,” Communications said, “a message from Commander Kavinte. Your eyes only.”

“This can’t be good,” Jedao said, although his tone was more annoyed than worried. “I’ll hear it in my quarters. General Khiruev, let me know if anything exciting happens.”

“Sir,” Khiruev said.

Exactly one hour after that, Jedao called Khiruev in the command center. “Come see me,” Jedao said. That was all.

“I hope it’s not death spores,” Janaia remarked.

“I don’t think anyone could keep death spores secret from the whole swarm,” Khiruev said. “I’d better see what the issue is.”

“Better you than me,” Janaia said. They shared a chuckle. Muris exuded disapproval, ever so faintly.

The door to Jedao’s quarters opened at Khiruev’s approach. Jedao stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at something angled so Khiruev couldn’t yet see it in any detail. Khiruev saluted and waited.

“At ease,” Jedao said. “You know, I always hated it when my commanding officers told me to be frank. But hell, I’m going to ask you to be frank.

“I have spent most of an unnaturally long life doing horrible things to people. Assassination. Torture. Treason. Mass murder. It doesn’t sound like anything when you pare it down to such a short list, but those were real people. It was—I did real harm. Which is the long way of saying that my personal metric for horrible things is not calibrated right. I need you to tell me how bad this thing is that I’m going to show you.”

Khiruev considered this, then decided that honesty wouldn’t cost her anything. “Sir,” she said, “I’m a high officer. I got to my present rank by doing many of the same things you did.”

“Just humor me, General. I’d like to believe that someone in this damn swarm is a better human being than I am.”

“Then show me whatever it is.”

Jedao gestured for Khiruev to come around and stand next to him. The video had been taken by the engineering team on Singe the Hour. Jedao fast-forwarded past the decontamination precautions to the part where the team breached the casket. There wasn’t a better word for the object. On the lid of the casket shone a golden plaque. It was engraved with an archaic form of the Hafn script, which Khiruev recognized but couldn’t read. The border featured an elaborate design of unfamiliar flowers, fruit, and feathers entwined in knotwork. When she looked more closely, she could see odd cavorting insects worked into the design, and what looked suspiciously like cat’s cradle figures.

The technicians in their suits had worked out how to remove the lid from the casket. It came off with a whisper of blue-violet vapor. Someone had appended a note saying that they were still studying the gas, but preliminary results said it was not toxic. It took Khiruev a long moment to understand what she saw within the casket. Jedao kept silent.

The first thing Khiruev noticed was the care with which the components—she struggled for a better term—had been laid out. Beautiful long-necked birds of a type she had never seen before, their curling crests arranged just so. Flowers whose petals moved as though they were breathing. Filaments of gold and crystal threading in and out of flesh and stem, eventually winding their way to the circuit-inscribed walls of the casket.

In the center of the casket was a boy, or a very young man. At various junctures, his flesh was pale and translucent. A complicated circulatory system grew out of the translucent regions and joined him to the birds, the flowers, the filaments. The veins were also translucent, and an endless procession of small red spiders crawled through them.

In one hand he clutched a faded purple cord tied into a loop. It was exactly the right length for cat’s cradle, and it was the only item in the casket that didn’t look expensively contrived.

Jedao paused playback. “They got medics in there,” he said, almost in a normal voice, “but the boy—the whole whatever-it-is—went into cardiac arrest or the equivalent. They shoved him into a jury-rigged sleeper unit, but I don’t think there’s any hope.”

Khiruev had vaguely assumed that Jedao was one of those people who disliked children since she’d never heard any mention in the histories that Jedao had fathered any. The shadow of anguish in Jedao’s eyes made her reconsider.

Jedao was looking into the distance. “Tell me, General, what the fuck are we fighting? What’s so wrong with the Hafn calendar that this is their best way of making masses of scouts?”

“If they’re like us,” Khiruev said, “they’re locked into their existing calendar for exotic technologies they can’t bear to give up, and that means they’re stuck with some bloody awful options in other areas.”

“Tell me you didn’t know about this,” Jedao said.

“I didn’t know about this,” Khiruev said. “It must be a new development permitting this invasion, or an old one they were hiding from us as a trump card. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. We’re Kel. We fight where we’re told. I understood that you already wanted to fight the Hafn.”