“I came with Captain Seivarden,” I said. The Anaander Mianaai who’d come forward clipped herself to one handhold, then another, and pulled a gun from the tool-holder on her suit. “What is the pod doing?” The sail-pod was still too close to me.
“The pilot is offering help to the people on your hull. She’s only just realized it’s the Lord of the Radch, who’s told her to back off.” The sail-pod would do the Lord of the Radch very little good—it was built for only very short trips, more a toy than anything else. It would never make it as far as Mercy of Kalr. Not in one piece, and not with its passengers alive and breathing.
“Are there any other Anaanders outside the station?”
“There don’t appear to be.”
The Anaander Mianaai with the gun extended armor in a flash of silver that covered her vacuum suit, held the gun against the shuttle’s hull, and fired. I’ve heard it said that guns won’t fire in a vacuum, but really it depends on the gun. This one fired, the impact a bang that I could feel where I clung to the pilot’s seat. The force of the shot pushed her back, but not far, securely clipped as she was to the hull. She fired again, bang. And again. And again.
Some shuttles were armored. Some even had a larger version of my own armor. This shuttle wasn’t, didn’t. This shuttle’s hull was built to withstand a fair number of random impacts, but it wasn’t built to endure continued stress on the same spot, over and over again. Bang. She had thought through her inability to open the airlock, realized that whoever was piloting this shuttle was her enemy. Realized that I had removed the inner door, and that the outer wouldn’t open until the air was out of the entire shuttle. If Anaander Mianaai could get in, she could patch the bullet hole and repressurize the shuttle. Even after a hull breach the shuttle (unlike the sail-pod) would have enough air to take her all the way to Mercy of Kalr.
If she had tried to order the palace’s destruction from where she hung on to the side of this shuttle, she had failed. More likely, I realized, she’d known from the beginning such an order would fail and had not tried to give it. She needed to get aboard a ship, order it closer to the palace, and breach its heat shield herself. She wouldn’t be able to get anyone else to do it for her.
If Mercy of Kalr was correct, and there were no other Anaanders outside the station, all I had to do was get rid of these. The rest, whatever was happening on the station, I would have to leave to Skaaiat and Seivarden. And Anaander Mianaai.
“I remember the last time we met,” said Mercy of Kalr. “It was at Prid Nadeni.”
A trap. “We never met.” Bang. The sail-pod moved away, but not far. “Until now. And I was never at Prid Nadeni.” But what did it prove, that I knew that?
Verifying my identity might have been easy, if I hadn’t disabled or hidden so many of my implants. I thought for a moment, considering, and then I spoke a string of words, the closest I could get with my single, human mouth to the way I would have identified myself to another ship, so long ago.
Silence, punctuated by another shot against the shuttle hull.
“Are you really Justice of Toren?” asked Mercy of Kalr at length. “Where have you been? And where’s the rest of you? And what’s happening?”
“Where I’ve been is a long story. The rest of me is gone. Anaander Mianaai breached my heat shield.” Bang. The forward Anaander ejected the magazine from her gun, slowly and methodically, and inserted another. The others still huddled around the airlock. “I assume you know what’s going on with Anaander Mianaai.”
“Only partially,” said Mercy of Kalr. “I find I’m having difficulty saying what I think is happening.”
No surprise at all, to me. “The Lord of the Radch visited you in secret, and placed some new accesses. Probably other things. Orders. Instructions. In secret, because she was hiding what she’d done from herself. Back at the palace”—it seemed ages ago, now, but it had only been a few hours—“I told all of her straight out what was happening. That she was divided, moving against herself. She doesn’t want that knowledge to go any further, and there’s a part of her that wants to use you to destroy the station before the information can get out. She’d rather do that than face the results of that knowledge.” Silence from Mercy of Kalr. “You’re bound to obey her. But I know…” My throat closed up. I swallowed. “I know there’s only so far you can be forced to go. But it would be extremely unfortunate for the residents of Omaugh Palace if you discovered that point after having killed them all.” Bang. Steady. Patient. Anaander Mianaai only needed one very small hole, and some time. And there was plenty of time.
“Which one destroyed you?”
“Does it matter?”