Dhanneth was trying to get his attention. He spoke in the plainest, barest form of the high language. “You’re immune,” he said. He looked ghastly, but the treatment that Medical had given him for the allergic reaction seemed to remain in effect.
Talaw had lost consciousness. The masks didn’t seem to be doing anyone any good. And why should they? While the Kel had stepped up checks of equipment after Kujen’s little surprise, the servitors would have had ample opportunity to sabotage the masks before their attack.
“You deserved better,” Jedao said to Dhanneth. To all the Kel.
There were too many servitors, and they had the advantage of surprise, and a poisoned foe. The other Kel were firing, but few of them could even stand. Jedao fired until he ran out of ammunition. Snagged another firearm off one of the fallen. No one fired on him, or at Dhanneth or Talaw, because they were next to him. But he couldn’t shield everybody at once.
Black and gold, black and red, the dead everywhere around him.
Dhanneth shook his head with an effort. He pointed toward the hall that led to the emergency survival capsules. “Save—one. Major.”
“Yes,” Jedao said. He knew what he had to do. Dhanneth and Talaw would need the capsules. For his part—“Come with me.”
Dhanneth helped Jedao carry Talaw down the hall, past the spilled corpses. Silently, the servitors parted for them. Jedao worked one capsule’s controls while Dhanneth placed Talaw in the capsule.
“The hexarch said that—that you never wanted anything to do with me,” Jedao said. “Was that—was that true?”
Dhanneth didn’t speak, but for a moment the answer blazed in his eyes. “I hated you from the beginning. I don’t remember everything, but what I do—all the things you took from me—”
“I see,” Jedao said softly. “I’m very sorry.” An apology was poor compensation for what he had done; but it was all he had to give. He opened the next capsule. “Now you.”
Dhanneth smiled at him. “Live,” he said. His voice was rough with suppressed emotion. “Both of you.” Jedao understood his intent too late. Dhanneth grabbed the gun, brought it up to the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.
Jedao wasn’t aware of having screamed Dhanneth’s name until the pain hit a moment later, the rawness of his throat. For a moment all he could do was stare at the fallen body, the red, red splash. A phantom ache flared up in his wrists, the memory of the time Dhanneth had bound him. That was all.
It was perfectly Kel, and a perfectly Kel revenge. Dhanneth had saved his commander. He had also repudiated the affair in the strongest terms possible.
Jedao wasn’t feeling steady in any sense of the word. A distant roaring clogged his ears. He programmed Talaw’s capsule and his own to follow a narrowly calculated trajectory.
He locked himself into the capsule. Hit the launch button. Braced himself against the sudden acceleration. The capsule hurtled through a dark tube and out into a greater darkness.
As much as he wished to fold away into the capsule’s promised hibernation, he couldn’t rest yet. Just ahead of him, Talaw’s capsule winked at him against a backdrop of stars and nebulae and the nearer distance of the swarm. Yellow lights: I am Kel. Come save me.
I’m part moth.
And moths flew.
Jedao reached out for the spacetime weave and pulled himself and Talaw away from the battlefield. The suddenness of the pain that arced through him all the way down to bone took him by surprise, but it was no worse than anything else he had endured today. As clumsy as his effort was, it worked. Between one blink and the next, they were translated across a stretch of space and out of harm’s way.
Choking back a sob, Jedao hit the control that would put him in hibernation. Live, he thought at Talaw as sleep enfolded him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“WAKE UP, SUNSHINE,” a cheerful voice said, entirely too loudly.
Cheris suppressed a groan and squeezed her eyes open. Her head failed to hurt in that particular floating way that implied that someone had medicated her to get her that way. The same for her ribs, although they’d hooked her up to a standard medical unit and bandaged her torso.
She was in a corner of a room with blue-green walls. Pastel green-and-pink paper screens featuring a bland geometric pattern blocked her view of the rest of the room. A small table rested to the side, with a pitcher and a glass of water within easy reach. 1491625 was nowhere in sight; she wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
The cheerful voice belonged to a short, squat man, a corporal. He was dressed in Kel fatigues with the snake emblem that indicated that he worked for Medical. “Normally I would have let you sleep longer,” he added, “but powerful people desperately want to talk to you.”
Well, Cheris thought philosophically, I only have myself to blame for involving myself in world-shattering affairs. Life had been simpler—not better, but simpler—when she’d merely been an infantry captain. Sometimes she wondered what her old company would make of what she’d done with her life. Nothing good, she was sure; likely she’d never find out. She wasn’t sure whether cowardice or mercy or shame prevented her from looking them up.
“Fine,” Cheris said. “Is this room secured?”
The corporal laughed at her. “You’re being cared for by Protector-General Inesser’s personal medical team. If this room isn’t secure, than we have other problems.” He disappeared behind one of the screens, then reemerged with a slate. “Here you go. We’ll be monitoring your health, but call if you’re about to have an aneurysm.”
“Thank you,” Cheris said, a little dubiously, and waited until she heard a door swishing shut to thumb on the slate. A call was already waiting for her.
The slate blinked for a few minutes, then connected her. The grid considerately projected the faces of the people in the call at an angle so that she didn’t have to strain her neck to see them easily. None of the faces came as surprises to her: Kel Inesser. Kel Brezan. Shuos Mikodez.
“Hello,” Cheris said. “What’s the status of the battle?”
“The battle’s over,” Inesser said. “Jedao surrendered. That’s the point where things get messy.” Tersely, she summarized what had happened: the flight of the command moth, the disorganized capitulation of the rest of the swarm and Jedao’s ground troops, and—most troublingly—the retrieval of two survival capsules expelled from the command moth, except they’d wound up an improbable distance from the launch.
“Let me guess,” Cheris said. “Kujen and Jedao.”
“No,” Inesser said. “One of them was Jedao, or some sort of thing that resembles Jedao, although... well. Medical is confused as to just exactly what it is. Brezan thought you might have some insight.”
“What,” Cheris said, “because I failed to kill him?”
Slight pause. “It’s not entirely clear what, in fact, it would take to kill the thing, although Medical is urging against experimentation until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
“Then who’s the second rescuee?”
“They’ve been identified as one Commander Kel Talaw. Currently in stable condition. Medical believes Talaw was poisoned. We’re hoping to be able to question Talaw once they regain consciousness.”