This order forbids the use of civilization-destroying weapons or tactics on the alien threat beyond Parzrawantlak Sector, including nuclear strikes on civilian-occupied planetary systems, except in cases where such weapons or tactics are the only thing standing between us and certain civilization-wide death.
There was no certain civilization-wide death. Not now. Not anymore. Not since Swarm had done what he’d done.
She looked up from the strategy table and said, “Two Foam. Send Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise an order to stand down—for the moment.”
The Sunlit—there were more than one of them, of course, there were always more than one Sunlit—caught Eight Antidote by the upper arms when his legs wouldn’t hold him up. The world kept spinning. Nasturtium Terminal seemed claustrophobic—but not because of how many people were in it, this time. Now it felt tiny compared to being stretched over sectors and sectors of space, so spread-thin that being all in himself again was a rush of hideously intense sensation. Eight Antidote squeezed his eyes shut. It didn’t help. Even the reddish dark behind his eyelids was so present.
One of the Sunlit said, “Your Excellency. We have orders to form an escort for you back to the palace.”
Of course they did. The Emperor was going to kill him. Or maybe she’d let Three Azimuth do it. He was probably—definitely—a disruptive person now. “… You have my permission,” he managed to say. His voice sounded like a drunk person’s voice, not steady, sounds blurring into each other. Besides, they didn’t need permission. They were going to take him anyway.
Distantly, he heard Four Crocus ask, “Did you get what you needed, Your Excellency?”
He didn’t know what to tell her. Maybe wasn’t good enough. Yes, he’d achieved what he’d set out to do, and no one would ever get that order from Three Azimuth to kill a planet. And no, he didn’t think he’d made any difference at all.
“I hope so,” he managed instead, and let the cool gold-gloved hands of the Sunlit lead him away.
None of them expected to hear from Twenty Cicada again, Three Seagrass especially. That goodbye had been so final. So absolutely exquisite. She wished she had recorded it—she could have written him such a poem. She might. She might write for him, since it looked like they all might live, at least for long enough to compose a single set of verses.
(Maybe not long enough for an epic, or anything with a complex caesura-dependent rhyme scheme—there was still the problem of Darj Tarats, and who knew how long the détente Twenty Cicada had bought them would last?)
So when that channel stuttered back into static, open, two-way communication instead of just the one-way frequency Nine Hibiscus had shouted down, Three Seagrass was not only surprised but shocked: she’d been almost sure Twenty Cicada was dead. Or so far transformed that it was a functional equivalency.
But there was his voice. It was static-distorted, still, but also—off. The rhythms of his phrasing were gone to syncopation, like he was trying to remember speech and assembling it from first principles. His voice flooding the bridge, because Nine Hibiscus hadn’t adjusted the volume on that comms feed at all.
“Singing,” he said, and then there was a pause. And again, “Singing, oh—we—”
Nine Hibiscus said, “Swarm?” with a kind of broken hope that made Three Seagrass cringe.
“Yes,” he said. “Mostly yes—we are, it’s appropriate, that name. Hello. Mallow. Hello, we. Our—Weight for the Wheel, Mallow, love her for us. For—me. And. We—us and the others, we—want to establish. Is there the envoy?”
“Yes,” said Three Seagrass. “I’m here.”
“And is there the other one? The—memory-person. The. The spook and her pet.” He sounded like he’d found the phrase somewhere in memory, a single phrase recalled all together. “The Stationer.”
“I’m here too,” Mahit said. Nine Hibiscus was staring at them, her eyes glitter-wet with tears she was clearly refusing to shed.
“We—we want to establish. Diplomatic protocol. For a period of cease-fire.”
Three Seagrass looked to Nine Hibiscus, wordless, asking for permission. Nine Hibiscus nodded, a bare fraction of a movement.
“We accept a cease-fire,” she said. “What sort of diplomatic protocol did you have in mind, Twenty Cicada?” Using his name, in case there was enough of him left that his name meant something.
“Send—send us people. People to prove we are people. The memory-sharers. To talk with.”
Mahit said, “Stationers, you mean.”
A long pause.
“Yes?” said Twenty Cicada. Or what had been Twenty Cicada. “Stationers. Pilots. Sunlit. All. All. And we are people. If. We are singing, if.”
All. Everyone. Everyone, Teixcalaanli or not, who had ever been part of some kind of shared mind. Three Seagrass looked at Mahit, helpless with how little she understood of what this meant. What kind of person could be useful here.
“Yes,” said Mahit, and nodded to Three Seagrass. “The diplomats will be humans who understand—collectivity.”
If it was even possible for anyone to understand the kind of collectivity Twenty Cicada had rendered himself up to. Three Seagrass wasn’t so sure.
And then Two Foam said, “Yaotlek—Sixteen Moonrise won’t answer our comms. She’s still on approach target to the alien system. Approach and moving fast.”
Watching Nine Hibiscus try to reorient herself from talking to what was left of her adjutant to deal with whatever Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise was doing was like watching a warship attempt to reverse thrust; a wrench, a straining, not entirely effective. It made Three Seagrass wince.
“She’s what?” asked the yaotlek.
“Still on attack vector,” Two Foam repeated. “With shatterbombs primed. She hasn’t acknowledged any of the stand-down orders you sent—”
Nine Hibiscus’s face was a mask. “They’re not my orders. They’re the Emperor’s. Send it again. Tell her if she continues on this course, she is in direct insubordination to the Emperor of all Teixcalaan.”
Two Foam turned back to the console. Her eyes flickered behind her cloudhook; her hands flew through the projected communication-space of the Fleet. There was a strangled, hideous silence; even the creature on the other end of the line, Swarm, it was easier for Three Seagrass to think of him as Swarm and not Twenty Cicada now, draw some separation—even he was quiet.
“No acknowledgment,” said Two Foam, at last. “The Twenty-Fourth is speeding up. She doesn’t—want to hear us, yaotlek.”
Three Seagrass thought, She doesn’t want to hear us, or the aliens, or anything but her own course of action. And then, bright and vivid and nauseating: This is going to be the shortest cease-fire in the history of the Empire.
She watched the mask of Nine Hibiscus’s face crack, an internal decision made, one that flayed her as raw as a barbarian, all of her features twisted in certainty and grief at once, and couldn’t figure out anything at all she could say—and she’d thought herself a negotiator!—that would change anyone’s course now.
It was easier if Nine Hibiscus thought of the static-scattered voice on the other side of the commlink down to Peloa-2 as someone already a ghost. Or—equally heart-flaying, equally absurd—some other person she had never known, who happened to share a name with her dearest friend, the adjutant who had served with her for more than two indictions. A coincidence. No more, no less.