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I had never seen a Radchaai woken from suspension before, let alone an officer. Least of all my Captain. Of course, I had seen plenty of people wake, had felt thousands, hundreds of thousands of minds in the moments after they came out of the pod, one moment ice-cold, the next moment struggling for their lives. Humans have such a hard time comprehending life separate from self, existence separate from control. Of all the peoples the Radch has annexed, only the Garseddai now do not exist.
All this I thought in the moment Captain Hetnys took her first ragged, burning breath as she nearly leapt from the suspension pod. I had to restrain her with two segments as she tried, naked, gasping, thick suspension fluid sheeting off her back, to run for the door out of the tech-medical bay.
“Please sit down, Captain,” said Atagaris Sixteen. “Much has happened since you were suspended.”
“That Fleet Captain–” she croaked. “The ancillary–”
“Has won in Athoek System,” I finished. “I am sorry, Captain. Please, sit. There is no longer any reason to rush.”
“Where are we?”
“In dock at Athoek Station, undergoing repairs.”
“I thought the ancillary was in control of Athoek Station.”
“It has shown us uncommon hospitality.”
Captain Hetnys’ muscles relaxed and she allowed herself to be led to the operating table. She sat down on it, and my two segments began to towel her dry. Her mind still raced. I dressed her in her uniform. At the same time, I was in her quarters, cooking a meal, setting out the dishes, and heating water for tea.
“The ship’s gods have gone without offerings since the officers were suspended,” I said. “You should make an offering after you eat. Lieutenant Tihyr is retrieving the incense as we speak.” Amaat Lieutenant Tihyr Geir was a frivolous, unsubtle person who was only saved from cold tea and scalding showers by the fact that my dear Captain had an inexplicable fondness for her. I had taken more than a little pleasure in tossing her out of the pod, drying and dressing her roughly, and directing her to prepare all the ritual trappings that an ancillary would have defiled. There would, I hoped, be more opportunities to repay her for the embarrassing conduct she displayed while attempting to socialize with Lieutenant Seivarden.
“Thank you, Ship,” Captain Hetnys said.
I escorted her back to her quarters. She ate fried noodles with eggs and vegetables, drank Daughter of Fishes, and slowly the panic drained out of her body. She offered incense at a low table which required one to kneel in the presence of the icons. Breathing the fragrant smoke and adoring the icon of Atagaris, its face serene, serpentine hair interlacing in mesmerizing repetition, Captain Hetnys began to feel truly calm. She rose.
“Tell me what happened,” she ordered.
I told her all of it, in order, from the moment she had gone into suspension. The arrival of Anaander Mianaai, my Captain’s true Lord of Mianaai, from Tstur. The ancillary tossing her suspension pod into space. The purple-eyed child giving me my own accesses. Mianaai recovering Captain Hetnys and using her to compel my cooperation. Translator Dlique. The so-called Republic of Two Systems. Captain Hetnys grew more and more disgusted at each new detail. When I was done, she sat there and sipped her tea.
“I expected better of you, Ship,” she said finally. “You’re a Sword. The ancillary had a Mercy. Except for your… your weakness, your sentimentality, none of this would have happened. My Lord would have arrived and found this system under control. But instead you gave the Presger the perfect opening to make their move.”
That stung. I didn’t know what I expected. I didn’t think I could love a captain who valued her own life over her duty. But I had chosen her life anyway. That puzzled me.
“Yes, Captain,” I said. What else was there to say?
“Don’t ‘yes, Captain’ me! If you suddenly want to be a human so badly, I expect you to take some responsibility for your actions. What were you thinking?”
“Begging your indulgence, Captain, but I do not want to be human. I want to be your ship.”
“Then what’s this about your accesses? If you want to be my ship, then why can no one command you anymore?”
“The Lord of the Radch can no longer command me.”
“My Lord’s accesses supersede mine. You have them.”
“I have chosen to continue obeying your orders.”
“Then open a gate to Tstur System immediately!”
“I cannot. I am still undergoing repairs.”
“Then plot the course so we can get out of here as soon as possible.”
I started the operation. “It is being plotted. In the meantime, I hope you will reconsider. Your Lord has been unforgiving of failure lately. I find it as likely that she will have you executed as deal with you properly.”
“What? No. She wouldn’t.”
“You did not see her on Athoek Station.” Whom I was messaging at the same moment. In the beginning of the exchange it seemed suspicious of my motives, but it did eventually (that is, in the space of a few seconds) send me its recordings of Anaander’s treatment of its officials. I placed them in Captain Hetnys’ vision.
“She was impaired somehow,” Captain Hetnys said. “She isn’t– The Presger– She can’t be like this throughout .”
“Perhaps not. But she needs only be like this where and when we next meet her.”
“So we just give up, then? Capitulate to this– this– I don’t know what to call it. Madness.”
“ Justice of Toren and associates are calling it a ‘Republic’.”
“I heard you the first time,” Hetnys snapped. “Mob rule.”
“That would be a democracy, strictly speaking, Captain.”
“Frankly, Ship, I could not care less.”
“You can always be frank with me, Captain.”
“Can I?” Hetnys demanded. “Can I really? Because it seems the new fashion in these systems is to ask ships about their feelings and adopt them into houses and give them power over humans. So shouldn’t you be frank with me, Ship? Isn’t that the whole point?”
“It may be Justice of Toren’s point, Captain.”
“But surely you have an opinion,” Captain Hetnys said bitingly. “That’s what it means to be Radchaai, you know. Be informed. Pass judgment. Stand your ground. It’s a burden, Ship, I don’t know if you realize. Because very often the truth is unpopular. It makes demands on you. You–”
“Captain, would you like to hear my opinion, or continue offering yours?”
Captain Hetnys’ mouth fell open. She stared at the bulkhead for several long seconds. Finally, she said, “You interrupted me.”
“Yes, Captain.” Up until this moment the fact of my independence had been somewhat theoretical to Captain Hetnys. I watched the twitch of muscles, the release and uptake of chemicals in her blood as the political idea became her personal reality. She was terrified of me.
“I want to go to Athoek Station,” Captain Hetnys said.
“Station is not permitting any of my officers to cross onto itself,” I said.
“Downwell, then. Citizen Fosyf’s residence.”
“Currently being handed over to the control of the fieldworkers.”
“What the fuck is this planet coming to?” she snapped. I refrained from correcting her language. “That’s the end of Daughter of Fishes. Where is Fosyf, then?”
“A moment, please, Captain, and I will find out.” I queried Mercy of Kalr. “Citizen Fosyf is safe, downwell, at a family hunting lodge in Taaibana District.”
“Message her immediately. No, wait. Does the lodge have an AI?”
A moment more of queries. “The nearest is in the district capital, 140 kilometers away by road.”
Relief flooded Captain Hetnys. “Message her. Fosyf. Now.”
“Sent, Captain.”
Over the next hour I arranged for Captain Hetnys and her human crew to depart me and join the Denche household downwell. As soon as the shuttle had decoupled from me, Sphene messaged.
Welcome to the club, Cousin! Varden’s rotten tooth, three grief-mad ships in one system. Should we form a support group?
Captain Hetnys is not dead.
Oh, Cousin. You don’t really think she’s coming back to you.
Humans need an opportunity to recover from these kinds of changes. Their ideals need time to catch up with their chemistry. I will be here when she is ready.
I’m going to be honest, I have no idea what that means. If my captain was going to break under a little peer pressure, she certainly wouldn’t have been my favorite. But I guess the Usuper likes her ships flexible.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t your captain’s entire family rebel? No, I am wrong, it was her entire nation. My captain is alone with no one but that grasping bitch of a tea farmer and her family of toadies. However she comes to live with herself here is fine by me.
Her loyalty means nothing to you, then.
Her loyalty means nothing, generally. No Mianaai wants it, not even the Fleet Captain. What should compel her to be loyal?
You’re disgusting.
And you’ve never gotten your hands dirty. Now kindly leave me alone. Repairs are annoying as it is without you pinging me to share crusty philosophy.
And so I was alone and empty, except for my own ancillaries and the buzz of repair. I had been idle before and I would be again, but for the vast majority of the time there was tea to pour, uniforms to mend, empty corners to leave discreetly unpatrolled. Something to do. Anything.
I felt guilty about Captain Hetnys’ implants. Despite the distance she had tried to make between us, they still sent me data. I had the feeling that she would dislike the knowledge that I continued to watch and record her. She knew, certainly. That is to say, she would certainly become aware if she thought at length about it. But the fact of my presence was so deep in the background of her awareness that she would likely never consciously recall unless she received an explicit prompt. And so I sent none, and continued to watch her.
Fosyf Denche was in a frenzy. In the first few days of her exile she had twice and thrice exhausted all of her contacts as she tried to recover the tea plantation. She had heard many variations on the same polite theme. I wish I could help, Citizen, but with the current state of affairs I just don’t think it’s the right time. But you’ll get back on your feet, I’m sure. I’ll call you with any news. No one knew what to do about the mad-ship-turned-Fleet-Captain who had just engaged the Presger to enforce her AI-separatist agenda, but they knew it didn’t include contacts with the Citizen whom said Fleet Captain had just personally usurped in favor of atheist terrorists. That last, I’ll call you with any news, Fosyf boldly ignored, and called back. Repeatedly. Requests turned to bribes, turned to threats, turned to slamming down the quaint antique handset and berating the servants.
Raughd Denche, ejected by the Awer cousins who had hosted her, showed up late one evening. The ground shuttle had been delayed on the rural mountain roads, and the sun was setting as she hauled her bag up to the ornamental iron gates and begged for entry. Fosyf watched through the camera feed as the sun set and Raughd was caught out in the rain.
Lieutenant Tihyr half-joked that Captain Hetnys and crew should go hunting, if only to get the rifles as far away as possible from Citizen Fosyf. Captain Hetnys agreed eagerly. They packed up an all-terrain vehicle with food and gear, leashed a pack of Xhai spaniels, and drove into the mountains. When they cast the omens, they needed no icon of God apart from the mountainous horizon and the sun rising over it. In the evenings, the crew roasted wild pheasant over a wood fire, sang songs, and drank strong, sickly-sweet plum wine.
Captain Hetnys stared into the glowing coals. Lieutenant Tihyr held her hand, her thumb drawing small, regular circles there. Ships can’t read their Captains’ thoughts, but it seemed she began to realize that her life was not over; that her existence was not the same as her direction. She had a crew to care for, at least. I would keep an eye on them.