“I’d like to see it try,” said Ship, but only to me.
“That’s not Captain Hetnys,” said Ekalu. “I think it’s her Amaat lieutenant.”
“Sword of Atagaris,” I said. Ship would know to transmit my words. “This is Fleet Captain Breq Mianaai commanding Mercy of Kalr. Explain yourself.”
It took a half second for my message to reach Sword of Atagaris, and four seconds for the lieutenant in question to collect herself enough to reply. “Fleet Captain, sir. My apologies, sir.” In the meantime, Mercy of Kalr identified itself to Sword of Atagaris. “We… we were afraid you weren’t what you appeared to be, sir.”
“What did you think we were, Lieutenant?”
“I… I don’t know, sir. It was just, sir, we weren’t expecting you. There are rumors that Omaugh Palace was under attack, or even destroyed, and we haven’t had any word from them for nearly a month now.”
I looked at Lieutenant Ekalu. She had reverted to the habit of every soldier on Mercy of Kalr and cleared her face of any expression. That alone was eloquent, but of course I could see more. Even discounting what had just happened, she did not have a high opinion of Sword of Atagaris’s Amaat lieutenant.
“If you’d had your way, Lieutenant,” I said dryly, “you’d be waiting even longer for word from Omaugh. I’ll speak to Captain Hetnys now.”
“Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence,” replied the lieutenant. “Captain Hetnys is on Athoek Station.” She must have realized how that sounded, because she added, after a very brief pause, “Consulting with the system governor.”
“And when I find her there,” I asked, making my tone just slightly sarcastic, “will she be able to better explain to me just what it is you think you’re doing out here?”
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Ship cut the connection, and I turned to Lieutenant Ekalu. “You’re acquainted with this officer?”
Still that expressionless face. “Water will wear away stone, sir.”
It was a proverb. Or half of one. Water will wear away stone, but it won’t cook supper. Everything has its own strengths. Said with enough irony, it could also imply that since the gods surely had a purpose for everyone the person in question must be good for something, but the speaker couldn’t fathom what it might be. “Her family is good,” added Ekalu at my silence, still impassive. “Genealogy as long as your arm. Her mother is second cousin to the granddaughter of a client of a client of Mianaai itself, sir.”
And made sure everyone knew it, apparently. “And the captain?” Anaander Mianaai had told me that what Captain Hetnys lacked in the way of vision she made up for with a conscientious attention to duty. “Is she likely to have left orders to attack anything that came into the system?”
“I wouldn’t think so, sir. But the lieutenant isn’t exactly… imaginative, sir. Knees stronger than her head.” Ekalu’s accent slipped at that last, just a bit. “Begging the fleet captain’s indulgence.”
So, likely to be acting under orders that suggested incoming ships might be a threat. I would have to ask Captain Hetnys about that, when I met her.
The hookup to Athoek Station’s dock was largely automated. When the pressure equalized and Five opened the shuttle hatch, Lieutenant Tisarwat and I pushed ourselves over the awkward boundary between the shuttle’s weightlessness and the station’s artificial gravity. The bay was dingy gray, scuffed, like any other bay on any other station.
A ship’s captain stood waiting there, an ancillary straight and still behind her. Seeing it I felt a stab of envy. I had once been what that ancillary was. I never could be that again.
“Captain Hetnys,” I said, as Tisarwat came up behind me.
Captain Hetnys was tall—taller than I was by a good ten centimeters—broad, and solidly built. Her hair, clipped military-short, was a silvery gray, a stark contrast to the darkness of her skin. A matter of vanity, perhaps—she’d certainly chosen that hair color, wanted people to notice it, or notice the close cut. Not all of the pins she wore in careful, uncustomary rows on the front of her uniform jacket had names on them, and those that did I couldn’t read from this distance. She bowed. “Fleet Captain, sir.”
I did not bow. “I’ll see the system governor now,” I said, cold and matter-of-fact. Leaning just a bit on that antique accent any Mianaai would have. “And afterward you’ll explain to me why your ship threatened to attack me when I arrived.”
“Sir.” She paused a moment, trying, I thought, to look untroubled. When I’d first messaged Athoek Station I’d been told that System Governor Giarod was unavoidably occupied by religious obligations, and would be for some time. As was, apparently, every station official of any standing. This was a holiday that came around on an Athoeki calendar, and possibly because of that, because it was merely a local festival, no one had seen fit to warn me that actually it was important enough to nearly shut down the entire station. Captain Hetnys knew I’d been told the governor was unavailable for some hours. “The initiates should be coming out of the temple in an hour or two.” She started to frown, and then stopped herself. “Are you planning to stay on the station, sir?”
Behind me and Lieutenant Tisarwat, Kalr Five, Ten, and Eight, and Bo Nine hauled luggage out of the shuttle. Presumably the impetus behind Captain Hetnys’s question.
“It’s only, sir,” she went on, when I didn’t answer immediately, “that lodgings on the station are quite crowded just now. It might be difficult to find somewhere suitable.”
I’d already realized that the destruction of even a few gates would have rerouted traffic this way. There were several dozen ships here that had not expected to come to Athoek at all, and more that had meant to leave but couldn’t. Even though Anaander Mianaai’s order forbidding travel in the remaining gates couldn’t possibly have reached here yet, the captains of plenty of other ships might well be nervous about entering any gates at all for the next while. Any well-connected or well-funded travelers had likely taken up whatever comfortable lodgings might have been available here. Mercy of Kalr had already asked Station, just to be sure, and Station had replied that apart from the possibility of an invitation to stay in the system governor’s residence, the usual places were full up.
The fact that my possibly staying on the station appeared to dismay Captain Hetnys was nearly as interesting as the fact that Station apparently hadn’t mentioned my plans to her. Perhaps it hadn’t occurred to her to ask. “I have a place to stay, Captain.”
“Oh. That’s good, sir.” She didn’t seem convinced of it, though.
I gestured her to follow me and strode out of the bay into the corridor. Sword of Atagaris’s ancillary fell in behind the three of us, with Kalr Five. I could see—Mercy of Kalr showed me—Five’s vanity over her ability to play ancillary, right beside the actual thing.
The walls and floor of the corridor, like the docking bay, showed their age and ill-use. Neither had been cleaned with the frequency any self-respecting military ship expected. But colorful garlands brightened the walls. Seasonally appropriate garlands. “Captain,” I said after ten steps, without breaking stride. “I do understand that this is the Genitalia Festival. But when you say genitalia, doesn’t that usually mean genitals generally? Not just one kind?” For all the steps I’d taken, and as far down the corridor as I could see, the walls were hung with tiny penises. Bright green, hot pink, electric blue, and a particularly eye-searing orange.
“Sir,” said Captain Hetnys just behind me. “It’s a translation. The words are the same, in the Athoeki language.”