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“I’m told you’re Justice of Toren,” Medic said.
Ship had told her that, days ago, after the defensive maneuvers and the volleys of conflicting orders and the final recall of their last lieutenant. In the strange stasis that followed, Medic had attempted to make sense of a new constellation of data points: One Amaat One, seated in Command, hand steady and guts quivering, low on sleep; the carefully-aligned position of Mercy of Kalr in relation to the remaining ships in the system, and the palace; and Ship telling her that it was negotiating—negotiating!—with the Lord of the Radch for the compact figure now standing before her in Medical.
With the abrasive Captain Vel and the other staff gone, she and Ship could speak more freely, saving of course the presence of the triumphant Anaander Mianaai. But ships tended to be reticent by nature, and Medic and Mercy of Kalr had known one another for a long time now. There wasn’t much that needed to be said. And so even without any protracted discussion, Medic had taken the distinct impression that Mercy of Kalr was gathering in its new captain, shuttle to ship, like a baby bird lost from its nest.
The baby bird flicked one hand in a brief shrug. “What’s left of it.” She fixed Medic with an assessing gaze, preternaturally steady. “If I’m going to be captain here, I’ll need to have some implants restored to function. No doubt,” she—it—she—added coolly, “you’ve already been provided with all my available medical data.”
Which was true, but Medic wasn’t going to allow herself to be discomfited by that gaze. She was in fact already running the assessment, and could see very well what implant systems were offline.
“Can you restore them?” Ship asked, for her ear alone.
Definitely a baby bird, Medic thought. “I haven’t asked you if you know what you’re doing,” she retorted silently. Mercy of Kalr declined to answer that, on any of its levels. Aloud, Medic said, “You’re lucky I even have any ancillary tech specs on file.” Medic had thought herself lucky to be serving on a ship without ancillaries—though she had kept her distaste for the old ways private. But evidently not private enough, if the Lord of Mianaai had guessed Medic could be trusted on the new staff.
“Can you fix them, then?” That was Seivarden Vendaai, in her other ear—figuratively speaking. Ship had also told Medic that they would be getting a figure of military history for their senior (very senior) lieutenant, just in case having a lost troopship as captain of a Mercy wasn’t strange enough. Seivarden’s accent, her manners, and the carriage of her head all gave a predictable impression of aristocratic competence, but that impression was steeply undercut by her unwavering concern for an ancillary that in any other circumstances she’d have thoroughly ignored. She wasn’t, at the moment, supporting the captain by the arm, but she may as well have been; and Medic didn’t need Seivarden’s data uplink to see that she was anxious and exhausted, even more so than One Amaat One.
The object of all this solicitude was still looking at Medic directly, calm and still. Their eyes met, and she quirked one eyebrow. Ignoring Seivarden, Medic said shortly, “Up on the table, then. And take off your shirt. Captain.”
“Fleet Captain,” Ship corrected from the console, completing Medic’s feeling of crossing a boundary into microgravity. “My lord feels the extra authority might be necessary where we are going.”
The fleet captain did not change expression, but she did exhale through her nostrils in something just under a snort. She shrugged out of her civilian jacket and handed it to Seivarden in a motion that looked practiced between them, and started on the fastenings of her shirt. “I’ve got uniforms for us here,” Seivarden said, “when we’re done.”
“Of course,” the fleet captain murmured. “I would expect nothing less of my lord.” Extraordinary, the irony a ship could deploy, without any inflection of the voice.
Medic lined up the necessary tools on her trolley. Behind her the fleet captain began to hum, softly, absently; then to sing in a language Medic didn’t know, in a voice like burlap over steel.
That singing was Justice of Toren’s claim to fame, of course—well, that and being twenty years missing in action. She didn’t stop as Medic turned to her and began attaching nodes, just looked ahead patiently and finished the song. Then she started another one. Unperturbed, Seivarden unpacked and laid out uniforms for them both, then stood to wait her turn to be linked up.
Medic paused with the handheld. And finally admitted, silently, to Ship: “All right. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never had anything to do with ancillaries.” And wouldn’t, if Ship and the Lord of the Radch between them hadn’t given this one a commission.
“You’ve made the right start,” Ship said, throwing up a schematic before Medic’s vision and highlighting one of the nodes she’d placed. Medic took a deep breath and picked up the tool Ship indicated. Told the fleet captain to bend her head, which she did, with an air of having obeyed such medical commands many times before, on behalf of many other ancillaries over hundreds of years. How many bodies? How many years? Medic swallowed her gorge. Fortunately she was soon absorbed in the task and could forget her revulsion, murmuring questions to Ship at each step of the repair protocol. The fleet captain hummed and sang by intervals, breaking off only to answer questions (“Does that hurt?” “No,” calmly, or, “Yes,” in the exact same tone).
Measure. Adjust. Stop. Calibrate. Adjust. The readouts on Medic’s handheld gradually came into concert with the schematic. “You’re still depleted,” she observed, when the metabolism reporting system opened to her access.
“I slept on the shuttle.”
Thank you, I’ll let you know when that datum is relevant, Medic bit back, and I hope this isn’t an indication of what kind of patient you’ll be, and answered merely, “Good to know.”
The fleet captain resumed her song. Seivarden let out a short laugh. Right, so an indication it was. Medic huffed a sigh.
The repair processes finished, one by one clicking successfully into place. It remained only to code in the uplink to Mercy of Kalr. Medic hit the final key on the handheld, ignoring an irrational sense of Ship hovering over her shoulder.
There was no sound or motion in the room, and yet the change was immediate. Medic had been braced for an influx of direct medical data from the fleet captain: but she hadn’t prepared herself for the effect of that force in the other direction, like the strain of sudden pressure in a badly-cycled airlock. The fleet captain’s song cut off in a puff of breath, and her gaze was swallowed inward. For the briefest moment an expression twisted the serenity of her face—not anguish, not hunger, not rage, but something like all three—and then was gone again, leaving behind only a wet shine in her eyes.
“Breq?” Seivarden was at her shoulder, instantly observant, instantly concerned. The fleet captain gestured for silence, her gaze still inward. Seivarden ignored the gesture. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said the fleet captain.
“You don’t look fine,” Seivarden said, and at the same moment Ship said in both her ear and Medic’s, “You’d best sit still for a moment, Fleet Captain.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Mercy of Kalr’s new captain, and she hopped down from the table. “I need to get dressed.” She started toward the counter where Seivarden had laid out her uniform.
Or tried to. In her disorientation she put a foot wrong, and her native grace fell apart as she skimbled sideways, clutching for the nearest support, which was unfortunately the trolley. It rolled aside, slammed into the counter, and nearly dumped the fleet captain in a heap on the floor. She clung to its polished top. The tools rang to silence where they fell.
“Fine, are you?” Seivarden said, extra sarcastic in her alarm.
“I’m sorry,” said Mercy of Kalr.
“Now will you listen?” said Medic.
“I just—” the fleet captain’s answer was for all of them— “need a moment to adjust.”
“You’re going to need more than a moment,” Medic said caustically. “Your brain’s still recovering from vacuum exposure, and now you’ve just flooded it with data you’re not generating yourself. Ship told you to sit still. I don’t know why it should apologize.”
“It shouldn’t,” said the fleet captain. “And I’m fine.”
Medic opened her mouth to argue, but was briefly arrested by the awareness of far more data than she usually could get from a human linked up to the ship. She could see the fleet captain gathering herself, biology and engineering together to surge to her feet, against profound exhaustion and—yes, distress.
“You are not fine,” she snapped. “You’re not fooling anyone.”
“How fortunate that I don’t have to.”
That was when Medic’s control cracked apart, like the last dish on a shelf after an impact tremor. “Fleet Captain Breq—” she fought down her voice before it could rise but couldn’t stem the acid irony in her address— “I don’t know what you think you’re used to, but on this ship I am used to being able to issue medical directives for the benefit of my crew. Your pardon, sir, for reminding you there are limits to your prerogatives.”
The fleet captain was on her feet, her gaze flat and feral, her every muscle poised. “Limits to my prerogatives,” she repeated slowly, in a dead-level voice that made Seivarden go very still in Medic’s peripheral vision. Her eyes locked with the fleet captain’s: she felt a spike of real fear, and at the same moment saw her see that fear. They both froze.
No human captain could see her like this, read her emotions, her pulse, her submerged intentions. And no ship could use that knowledge against her. Limits to her prerogatives? The shadow of an unimaginable wrath seemed to pass over Medic, like the shadow of a great ship over a little one, a raptor over a sparrow’s nest.
“Oh, Ship,” Medic breathed. “What have you done?”
Before Mercy of Kalr could make a reply, the fleet captain recovered herself. “My apologies, Medic,” she said, calmly. “I believe you are right. The adjustment will be the work of more than a moment.” She began peeling nodes off her bare skin, which stuck to her gloves as she removed them; Seivarden reached to help.
After two calming breaths Medic said dryly: “Does that mean that if I say you should spend the next two days at rest in your quarters, you’ll do it?”
“I suppose,” said the fleet captain, with a small, deliberate sigh. “I can still get a lot done from my quarters.”
That was not at all what Medic had had in mind, but it was clear she was going to have to pick her battles.
The fleet captain’s gaze had gone inward again, so that Seivarden had to nudge her to put her arms in the sleeves of her uniform shirt as Seivarden held it up. “Why are the soldiers drinking water?” she said, and then gave her head a little shake. “Never mind, I know why. Seivarden—Ship—remind me to put tea on the requisition list.”
A half-smirk climbed Seivarden’s face. “So we’re doing this, then.”
“Yes, we’re doing this. Lest I overstrain my prerogatives.” Medic flushed, but fortunately the fleet captain was not paying attention; she was listening to something Ship was telling her, absently donning uniform trousers, boots, and jacket as Seivarden handed them to her. She came to herself briefly when Seivarden retrieved a lone memorial pin from the civilian jacket and held it out in her gloved hand; when that was fastened in place, she said, “Thank you, Seivarden. Come find me in my quarters when you’re linked up.”
And she would have made a graceful exit, except that she misjudged the doorframe and walked right into it. She stumbled back a pace, blinking.
Seivarden coughed delicately. “Fleet Captain,” she said, “may I suggest an adjustment of about five centimeters to your left?”
“You may not.” But when she glanced back at them, her eyelids were half-lowered in what Medic thought just might be amusement. And they heard the fleet captain’s rusty humming start up again in the corridor, and continue as it trailed out of earshot.
“She’s a bit hard on doctors,” Seivarden said, with a gesture of apology.
“I noticed,” said Medic. “Whereas you, I’m sure, are no trouble at all.”
“No trouble in the least!” Seivarden Vendaai really wasn’t very good at looking innocent. Medic gestured her up on the table and opened a fresh pack of nodes.
“Thank you, Medic,” Ship said in her ear.
“No need for that,” Medic growled quietly. “I just hope you’re happy.” Complaint and wish together.
A brief silence. Then: “Thank you. I am,” said Mercy of Kalr.
*