Time passed. The taste of ashes receded. He shivered constantly. But he had to endure. The Kel might require more information from him. He needed to be in a fit state to give it to them. With any luck, they wouldn’t ask too late for it to stop Jedao.
Brezan thought of the Kel who had been in the command center when Jedao took over, training their weapons on him. He thought of General Khiruev, and the first time they had met. Brezan had been surprised to be tapped for Khiruev’s staff after his predecessor developed a rare medical condition, and not sure he liked what it implied. The general had a reputation for unconventional thinking, not to mention flouting Kel Command’s wishes, which could be good or bad, depending.
During the first meeting, the general had asked him how he was settling in, to which Brezan made the only possible tactful response. (He did occasionally find his way to tact.) Khiruev had then said, unexpectedly, I hope you help me never to forget that it’s people that we send out to die. She was looking at a casualty list from the recent battle. It wasn’t the sort of confidence you’d expect as a newcomer, but he’d seen the bleakness in the general’s eyes and resolved to do what he could.
A sane person might be forgiven for not feeling a whole lot of affection for Kel Command at this point, but the fate of Khiruev and his swarm might depend on Brezan’s information, and Kel Command wasn’t why Brezan had become a hawk anyway. Indeed, Kel Command was a great argument for avoiding the Kel. Family wasn’t the reason, despite what Brezan had told Shuos Zehun in academy, although family had something to do with it. No: it was that the hexarchate was a terrible place to live, but it would be an even worse one if no one with a conscience consented to serve it.
You couldn’t pull the hexarchate apart and exchange it for something better. The fact that the heretics always lost was proof of that. So you had to do the next best thing, the only thing left: serve, and hope that serving honorably made some small difference.
Now, as the door to the antechamber slid open, Brezan staggered to his feet and prepared to bow. The person standing there was a rattled-looking Kel corporal. “Sir,” Brezan said, saluting instead.
The corporal opened the cell’s door and shut off the restraints. “Come with me, soldier,” he said.
Brezan wished he could ask what was going on, but he might as well enjoy blissful ignorance while it lasted, not to mention the odd sensation of being able to move freely. It was a minor miracle that he could walk fast enough to keep up.
They didn’t have far to go. The corporal brought him to an oversized conference room with a secured terminal, the Kel kind that had a nook of its own in the wall. “I’ll be right outside, soldier,” the corporal said. “Come out when they’re done with you.”
The light on the terminal indicated that someone wanted to talk, and the subdisplay had a summons with his name on it. Well, he couldn’t get more presentable, so he might as well approach the terminal. He saw his signifier like a dark, broken ghost in the golden metal. “Kel Brezan reporting as ordered,” he said, saluting preemptively. It only occurred to him too late to wonder if he should have changed his uniform into full formal.
The terminal brightened. “Kel Brezan,” said a woman’s voice, measured, precise. The broad, unsmiling face on the main display belonged to Hexarch Kel Tsoro.
Brezan had no idea what the hexarch required of him. He doubted she was going to personally order him to get a hot meal and a good night’s rest. “Hexarch,” he said.
“At ease,” Tsoro said. “Your information on Shuos Jedao has been verified. We have a new assignment for you.”
Brezan said nothing. According to his augment, seventy-seven days had elapsed since Jedao booted him from the Swanknot swarm. How much bureaucracy had prevented him from getting his warning through earlier, and how much damage had the Immolation Fox done in that time?
“Assignment” meant he wasn’t being dismissed from Kel service. On the other hand, the list of atrocious assignments filled up whole planets. He tamped down the flare-spark of hope.
“You seem to be confused on a certain point,” Tsoro added, with an instructor’s dryness, “so let us clarify this for you, because it’s important. You’re a crashhawk, Kel Brezan.”
He flinched. “Sir—”
“The test results are clear. Your formation instinct has decayed even from the low levels it displayed when you were in academy. It’s rare but not unheard of. But really, you should have figured it out during your confrontation with Jedao.”
“I wish to serve, sir,” Brezan said hoarsely. “It’s all I know.”
“Happily, there are precedents for crashhawks being permitted to remain among the Kel,” Tsoro said. “But you understand, it will be more difficult for you. Your actions will be scrutinized. You will have to choose, over and over, to be loyal. You won’t have formation instinct to guide you, especially when your orders give you pause and the habits of obedience wear thin. We are offering you this opportunity because you risked a great deal to bring us your warning, and because we approve of your conduct.”
“Then let me be a Kel, sir,” Brezan said, his heart thumping too rapidly.
“The assignment, then. This is to be a joint Kel-Andan operation. You will be assigned to Agent Andan Tseya of the silkmoth Beneath the Orchid.”
An Andan? For that matter, a silkmoth? They were small, swift courier vessels. He’d heard that you could build half a cindermoth for the price of one of the things. “Our objective, sir?” Brezan asked. He hadn’t realized that the Kel were now on friendly terms with the Andan, but he’d been too busy worrying about Jedao and the Hafn to pay attention to faction politics.
“Agent Tseya is to assassinate Jedao on his command moth,” Tsoro said, and smiled. “You will facilitate this as she directs.”
Assassinating Jedao as a single target, as opposed to blowing the whole moth up, would take either an Andan or a Shuos for preference, so that much made sense. Still, Brezan felt a stab of revulsion. The Kel had formation instinct, the Rahal had scrying, and the Andan could enthrall you if you were in range, assuming they knew you well enough. There were undoubtedly lots of records on Jedao’s personality structure to help Tseya out. He didn’t imagine that Jedao was long for this world once Tseya made him her pet.
“Your job, Kel Brezan,” Tsoro was saying, “is to wrest back control of the swarm once the agent is done.”
There was a problem with this scenario. “Sir,” Brezan said, “wouldn’t we be better off returning the swarm to General Khiruev or whichever senior officer is still alive?” He hoped Khiruev had survived, something he hadn’t permitted himself to contemplate earlier. As for himself, as much as he wished otherwise, he was no strategist. The swarm needed a line officer’s leadership in case the Hafn struck at an inconvenient time.
“If Jedao has some trick in store and eludes the agent,” Tsoro said, “we need someone to break his hold over the Kel. Khiruev won’t do. She’s already buckled once to Jedao’s authority. We’ve revoked Jedao’s commission, but by now Jedao has had a lot of time to talk to Khiruev, and the ninefox has a history of being extraordinarily persuasive when cornered. No, a general is no good to us. We need to send a high general.”
It took Brezan a moment to piece together the implications. “I believe you’ve coined a brand-new Kel joke, sir,” he said, too wrung-out and angry to care who he was talking to. “It’s quite unfunny.”
Tsoro smiled thinly. “Don’t be absurd,” she said. “The Kel never joke. You’d be surprised how hard it is to come up with a new one, besides.”