Tseya was going through more of the chatter. “Here’s another one,” she said. This time it concerned the Vidona extermination of the Mwennin. Very little text on this one, either.
“Hold on,” Brezan said when the video got to an appalling clip of a screaming boy and an instrument made of hot curved wires. He paused it. “Who the hell is passing Jedao these?” A quick check confirmed that this particular clip hadn’t been released by the official news services, but he wasn’t sure he bought that Jedao had faked it, either. The video displayed the Vidona seal in the corner. The mothgrid believed the seal was authentic.
Tseya pursed her lips. “An excellent question, although there’s not a lot we can do to find out. All the histories go on and on about Jedao as a tactician, but he did graduate from the Shuos before running off to play soldier. I presume he learned something about setting up intelligence networks while he was there. No, what I want to know is, why has the hexarchs’ response been so tepid?”
“What response?” Brezan retorted. “Other than the occasional bulletin, they haven’t done anything to counter the damage he’s doing to public morale.” Not that that was ever good to begin with.
“Yes, exactly,” Tseya said. She had pulled out her hairstick and was fiddling with it, her hair in disarray. “Managing information fallout is what the Shuos are for. Is Mikodez asleep or something?”
Brezan noted, with sharp alarm, the odd familiarity with which she mentioned Mikodez. She didn’t use an honorific, just the personal name, as though they were equals. Just how high a position had she occupied before her disgrace?
Tseya tapped the hairstick against the base of her palm, looking for all the world like she wished she could pin Mikodez and make him get to work. “It just figures,” she said. “We finally have a Shuos hexarch capable of hanging on to the seat longer than a hiccup, and the man has the attention span of a ferret. He probably got bored of the invasion in the first week and is off learning to bake custards instead.”
Ever since Exercise Purple Paranoia, Brezan had belonged to the category of people who thought about Shuos Mikodez as little as possible, in the belief that this would keep him from coming to Mikodez’s attention. But Brezan always remembered what Shuos Zehun had told him about Mikodez. He couldn’t help thinking that Tseya was missing part of the picture. Shuos cadets were not known for being willing to cooperate with each other. The fact that Mikodez had persuaded his classmates to do so for the exercise, put together with his forty-two years in power, suggested that he was dangerously charismatic, ferret or no ferret.
“Well, we can’t prod Hexarch Mikodez from here, either,” Brezan said, “unless you plan on calling him up.”
“Absolutely not,” Tseya said.
“Well, then. Anything else I should pay attention to in current events?”
He wasn’t sure whether he hoped the answer was a no or a yes. They knew, for instance, that Jedao had resupplied at Tankut Primary thirteen days ago, although Brezan couldn’t hope that the stationers had indulged in some sabotage. The idea was to take out Jedao with minimal damage to the swarm, after all. Elsewhere, several systems in the general vicinity were experiencing civil disruptions. Lensmoths had been dispatched, which meant the Rahal suspected that full-fledged heresy was around the corner.
Tseya scanned the digests. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
They passed the next two hours and seventy-three minutes with a minimum of conversation. Guiltily, Brezan was starting to wish that something would implode, just for variety, when Tseya swore under her breath. “What is it?” he asked.
“This isn’t going to end well,” she said, and passed the message over to his terminal.
“Please let it not be a surprise.”
“You won’t find it surprising, but it’s regrettable all the same.”
A moon-city and an orbital station had transmitted the Deuce of Gears when the Hafn veered close to their system. It had to be Brezan’s imagination that the red field was even bloodier than the one Jedao used. He smashed his fist against the terminal, then swore at the pain. Tseya frowned at him.
“Idiots,” Brezan said bitterly. “They didn’t need to do that. The Immolation Fox would have rescued them for some grandstanding purpose of his own if they’d been in real danger.” Aside from terrorizing the population, Brezan couldn’t see any good reason for the Hafn to bother. Neither city nor station had significant military value. “Now they’re going to be scoured.”
“Look at it from their point of view,” Tseya said. “The only Kel force in a position to chase off the foreigners is under Jedao’s control. They probably thought it was worth a try.” She put the hairstick down and fixed Brezan with a speculative stare. “Speaking of emblems, did you ever have a chance to register one?”
“My what?” Brezan said before he worked out what she meant. He blushed and averted his eyes, looking at the aquarium, then at the hairstick, anywhere but at her face. “You can’t be serious.”
“What, are you going with the temporary emblem?” she said, referring to the sword-and-feather.
Brezan made himself return her stare. “I don’t see why this is important all of a sudden,” he said. Was this some Andan thing about projecting the right image? “Jedao can’t have killed everyone in the swarm if it’s still functioning. There’ll be someone able to—”
“—take charge?”
He disliked the mocking edge to her tone, but maybe he had imagined it. “Look,” he said, “it’s inconsequential.”
Tseya leaned over and laid her palm on his chest right over the wings-and-flame insignia.
He froze.
“Are you telling me this is an illusion?” she said. “I thought the point of this exercise was for you to pull rank on Jedao the way he pulled rank on General Khiruev.”
Brezan wished desperately that he could pull away and stalk out of the command center, but Kel Command had assigned him to Tseya. Damned if he was going to slink away because of a few words. “It’s not an illusion,” he said. “It’s just—it’s just temporary.” How had the conversation turned hostile so suddenly?
“You’re not going to convince your own people if that’s all the conviction you can scare up.”
He glared at her, not trusting himself to speak.
“Look, you’re from a Kel family, yes?”
Brezan didn’t like where this was going.
Tseya waited. Her hand didn’t move.
“Yes,” he said stiffly, “although I don’t know why you’re asking me questions you know the answers to.”
“Two Kel sisters. One of whom is on General Inesser’s staff.”
“Go on,” Brezan said after counting to six, “tell me about my childhood.”
Her smile had no teeth in it. The teeth would have been friendlier. “You must be so disappointed that you can’t tell them about your spectacular new promotion.”
He couldn’t suppress his wince in time.
“Is there a proper way to tell your family that you’re a crashhawk?”
Thinking clearly was impossible. He had a flash of memory: the heat of her mouth, the curve of her neck, the delicious creamy skin of her thigh. “You know there isn’t,” he said. It was usually outprocessing or execution.
“It must be nice to be a special case,” she added before Brezan could devise a suitable retort. “I feel for you. I can’t imagine what they have planned for you once the mission’s over.”
Brezan clenched his teeth. The Andan were supposed to be the diplomatic ones. “I am Kel,” he said, although it felt as though he had to drag each word through fire and thorns. “I do what my orders tell me to. By choice if I must.”