Ancillary Justice

16

I spent a week moving in the non-space between Shis’urna and Valskaay—isolated, self-contained—before the Lord of the Radch made her move. No one else suspected anything, I had given no hint, no trace, not the faintest indication that anyone at all was on Var deck, that anything at all might be wrong.

Or so I had thought. “Ship,” Lieutenant Awn said to me, a week in, “is something wrong?”

“Why do you ask, Lieutenant?” I replied. One Esk replied. One Esk attended Lieutenant Awn constantly.

“We were in Ors together a long time,” Lieutenant Awn said, frowning slightly at the segment she was talking to. She had been in a constant state of misery since Ors, sometimes more intense, sometimes less, depending, I supposed, on what thoughts occurred to her at a given moment. “You just seem like something’s troubling you. And you’re quieter.” She made a sound, breathy half-amusement. “You were always humming or singing in the house. It’s too quiet now.”

“There are walls here, Lieutenant,” I pointed out. “There were none in the house in Ors.”

Her eyebrow twitched just slightly. I could see she knew my words for an evasion, but she didn’t pursue the question.

At the same time, in the Var decade room, Anaander Mianaai said to me, “You understand the stakes. What this means for the Radch.” I acknowledged this. “I know this must be disturbing to you.” It was the first acknowledgment of this possibility since she had come aboard. “I made you to serve my ends, for the good of the Radch. It’s part of your design, to want to serve me. And now you must not only serve me, but also oppose me.”

She was, I thought, making it remarkably easy for me to oppose her. One side or the other of her had done that, and I wasn’t sure which. But I said, through One Var, “Yes, my lord.”

“If she succeeds, ultimately the Radch will fragment. Not the center, not the Radch itself.” When most people spoke of the Radch they meant all of Radchaai territory, but in truth the Radch was a single location, a Dyson sphere, enclosed, self-contained. Nothing ritually impure was allowed within, no one uncivilized or nonhuman could enter its confines. Very, very few of Mianaai’s clients had ever set foot there, and only a few houses still existed who even had ancestors who had once lived there. It was an open question if anyone within knew or cared about the actions of Anaander Mianaai, or the extent or even existence of Radch territory. “The Radch itself, as the Radch, will survive longer. But my territory, that I built to protect it, to keep it pure, will shatter. I made myself into what I am, built all this”—she gestured sweepingly, the walls of the decade room encompassing, for her purposes, the entirety of Radch space—“all this, to keep that center safe. Uncontaminated. I couldn’t trust it to anyone else. Now, it seems, I can’t trust it to myself.”

“Surely not, my lord,” I said, at a loss for what else to say, not sure exactly what I was protesting.

“Billions of citizens will die in the process,” she continued, as though I had not spoken. “Through war, or lack of resources. And I…”

She hesitated. Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings. But I did not say so. The most powerful person in the universe didn’t need me to lecture her on religion or philosophy.

“But I am already broken,” she finished. “I can only fight to prevent my breaking further. Remove what is no longer myself.”

I wasn’t sure what I should, or could, say. I had no conscious memory of having this conversation previously, though I was certain now I must have, must have listened to Anaander Mianaai explain and justify her actions, after she used the overrides and changed… something. It must have been quite similar, perhaps even the same words. It had, after all, been the same person.

“And,” Anaander Mianaai continued, “I must remove my enemy’s weapons wherever I find them. Send Lieutenant Awn to me.”

Lieutenant Awn approached the Var decade room with trepidation, not knowing why I had sent her there. I had refused to answer her questions, which had only fed a growing feeling on her part that something was very wrong. Her boots on the white floor echoed emptily, despite One Var’s presence. As she reached it the decade room door slid open, nearly noiseless.

The sight of Anaander Mianaai within hit Lieutenant Awn like a blow, a vicious spike of fear, surprise, dread, shock, doubt, and bewilderment. Lieutenant Awn took three breaths, shallower, I could see, than she liked, and then hitched her shoulders just the slightest bit, stepped in, and prostrated herself.

“Lieutenant,” said Anaander Mianaai. Her accent, and tone, were the prototype of Lieutenant Skaaiat’s elegant vowels, of Lieutenant Issaaia’s thoughtless, slightly sneering arrogance. Lieutenant Awn lay facedown, waiting. Frightened.

As before I received no data from Mianaai that she did not deliberately send me. I had no information about her internal state. She seemed calm. Impassive, emotionless. I was sure that surface impression was a lie, though I didn’t understand why I thought that, except that she had yet to speak favorably of Lieutenant Awn, when in my opinion she should have. “Tell me, Lieutenant,” said Mianaai, after a long silence, “where those guns came from, and what you think happened in the temple of Ikkt.”

A combination of relief and fear washed through Lieutenant Awn. She had, in the moments available to process Anaander Mianaai’s presence here, formed an expectation that this question would be asked. “My lord, the guns could only have come from someone with sufficient authority to divert them and prevent their destruction.”

“You, for instance.”

A sharp stab of startlement and terror. “No, my lord, I assure you. I did disarm noncitizens local to my assignment, and some of them were Tanmind military.” The police station in the upper city had been quite well-armed, in fact. “But I had those disabled on the spot, before I sent them on. And according to their inventory numbers, these had been collected in Kould Ves.”

“By Justice of Toren troops?”

“So I understand, my lord.”

“Ship?”

I answered with one of One Var’s mouths. “My lord, the guns in question were collected by Sixteen and Seventeen Inu.” I named their lieutenant at the time, who had since been reassigned.

Anaander Mianaai made the barest hint of a frown. “So as far back as five years ago, someone with access—perhaps this Inu lieutenant, perhaps someone else, prevented these weapons from being destroyed, and hid them. For five years. And then, what, planted them in the Orsian swamp? To what end?”

Face still to the floor, blinking in confusion, Lieutenant Awn took one second to frame a reply. “I don’t know, my lord.”

“You’re lying,” said Mianaai, still sitting, leaning back in her chair as though quite relaxed and unconcerned, but her eyes had not left Lieutenant Awn. “I can see plainly that you are. And I’ve heard every conversation you’ve had, since the incident. Who did you mean when you spoke of someone else who would benefit from the situation?”

“If I’d known what name to put there, my lord, I would have used it. I only meant by it that there must be a specific person who acted, who caused it…” She stopped, took a breath, abandoned that sentence. “Someone conspired with the Tanmind, someone who had access to those guns. Whoever it was, they wanted trouble between the upper city and the lower. It was my job to prevent that. I did my best to prevent that.” Certainly an evasion. From the moment Anaander Mianaai had ordered the hasty execution of those Tanmind citizens in the temple, the first, most obvious suspect had been the Lord of the Radch herself.

“Why would anyone want trouble between the upper city and the lower?” Anaander Mianaai asked. “Who would exert themselves over it?”

“Jen Shinnan, my lord, and her associates,” answered Lieutenant Awn, on firmer ground, for the moment at least. “She felt the ethnic Orsians were unduly favored.”

“By you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“So you’re saying that in the first months of the annexation, Jen Shinnan found some Radchaai official willing to divert crates full of weapons so that five years later she could start trouble between the upper and lower city. To get you in trouble.”

“My lord!” Lieutenant Awn lifted her forehead one centimeter off the floor, then halted. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why. I don’t know wh…” She swallowed that last, which I knew would have been a lie. “What I know is, it was my job to keep the peace in Ors. That peace was threatened and I acted to…” She stopped, realizing perhaps that the sentence would be an awkward one to finish. “It was my job to protect the citizens in Ors.”

“Which is why you so vehemently protested the execution of the people who endangered the citizens in Ors.” Anaander Mianaai’s tone was dry, and sardonic.

“They were my responsibility, lord. And as I said at the time, they were under control, we could have held them until reinforcements arrived, very easily. You are the ultimate authority, and of course your orders must be obeyed, but I didn’t understand why those people had to die. I still don’t understand why they had to die right then.” A half-second pause. “I don’t need to understand why. I’m here to follow your orders. But I…” She paused again. Swallowed. “My lord, if you suspect anything of me, any wrongdoing or disloyalty, I beg you, have me interrogated when we reach Valskaay.”

The same drugs used for aptitudes testing and reeducation could be used for interrogation. A skilled interrogator could pry the most secret thoughts from a person’s mind. An unskilled one could throw up irrelevancies and confabulations, could damage her subject nearly as badly as an unskilled reeducator.

What Lieutenant Awn had asked for was something surrounded by legal obligations—not least among them the requirement that two witnesses be present, and Lieutenant Awn would have the right to name one of them.

I saw nausea and terror in her when Anaander Mianaai didn’t answer. “My lord, may I speak plainly?”

“By all means, speak plainly,” said Anaander Mianaai, dry and bitter.

Lieutenant Awn spoke, terrified, face still to the floor. “It was you. You diverted the guns, you planned that mob, with Jen Shinnan. But I don’t understand why. It can’t have been about me, I’m nobody.”

“But you do not intend to remain nobody, I think,” replied Anaander Mianaai. “Your pursuit of Skaaiat Awer tells me as much.”

“My…” Lieutenant Awn swallowed. “I never pursued her. We were friends. She oversaw the next district.”

“Friends, you call that.”

Lieutenant Awn’s face heated. And she remembered her accent, and her diction. “I am not presumptuous enough to call it more.” Miserable. Frightened.

Mianaai was silent for three seconds, and then said, “Perhaps not. Skaaiat Awer is handsome and charming, and no doubt good in bed. Someone like you would be easily susceptible to her manipulation. I have suspected Awer’s disloyalty for some time.”

Lieutenant Awn wanted to speak, I could see the muscles in her throat tense, but no sound came out.

“I am, yes, speaking of sedition. You say you’re loyal. And yet you associate with Skaaiat Awer.” Anaander Mianaai gestured and Skaaiat’s voice sounded in the decade room.

“I know you, Awn. If you’re going to do something that crazy, save it for when it’ll make a difference.”

And Lieutenant Awn’s reply: “Like Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One?”

“What difference,” asked Anaander Mianaai, “would you wish to make?”

“The sort of difference,” Lieutenant Awn replied, mouth gone dry, “that Mercy of Sarrse soldier made. If she hadn’t done what she did, all the business at Ime would still be going on.” As she spoke I’m sure she realized what it was she was saying. That this was dangerous territory. Her next words made it plain she did know. “She died for it, yes. But she revealed all that corruption to you.”

I had had a week to think about the things Anaander Mianaai had said to me. By now I had worked out how the governor of Ime might have had the accesses that prevented Ime Station from reporting her activities. She could only have gotten those accesses from Anaander Mianaai herself. The only question was, which Anaander Mianaai had enabled it?

“It was on all the public news channels,” Anaander Mianaai observed. “I would have preferred it wasn’t. Oh, yes,” she said, in answer to Lieutenant Awn’s surprise. “That wasn’t by my desire. The entire incident has sown doubt where before there was none. Discontent and fear where there had been only confidence in my ability to provide justice and benefit.

“Rumors I could have dealt with, but reports through approved channels! Broadcast where every Radchaai could see and hear! And without the publicity I might have let the Rrrrrr take the traitors away quietly. Instead I had to negotiate for their return, or else let them stand as an invitation to further mutiny. It caused me a great deal of trouble. It’s still causing trouble.”

“I didn’t realize,” said Lieutenant Awn, panic in her voice. “It was on all the public channels.” Then realization struck her. “I haven’t… I haven’t said anything about Ors. To anyone.”

“Except Skaaiat Awer,” the Lord of the Radch pointed out. Which was hardly just—Lieutenant Skaaiat had been nearby, close enough to see with her own eyes the evidence that something had happened. “No,” Mianaai continued, in answer to Lieutenant Awn’s inarticulate query, “it hasn’t turned up on public channels. Yet. And I can see that the idea that Skaaiat Awer might be a traitor is distressing to you. I think you’re having trouble believing it.”

Once again, Lieutenant Awn struggled to speak. “That is correct, my lord,” she finally managed.

“I can offer you,” said Mianaai in reply, “the opportunity to prove her innocence. And to better your situation. I can manipulate your assignment so that you can be close to her again. You need only take clientship when Skaaiat offers—oh, she’ll offer,” the Lord of the Radch said, seeing, I’m sure, Lieutenant Awn’s despair and doubt at her words. “Awer has been collecting people like you. Upstarts from previously unremarkable houses who suddenly find themselves in positions advantageous for business. Take clientship, and observe.” And report was left unsaid.

The Lord of the Radch was trying to turn her enemy’s instrument into her own. What would happen if she couldn’t do that?

But what would happen if she did? No matter what choice Lieutenant Awn made now, she would be acting against Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch.

I had already seen her choice once, when faced with death. She would choose the path that kept her alive. And she—and I—could puzzle out the implications of that path later, would see what the options were when matters were less immediately urgent.

In the Esk decade room Lieutenant Dariet asked, alarmed, “Ship, what’s wrong with One Esk?”

“My lord,” said Lieutenant Awn, her voice shaking with fear, face, as ever, to the floor. “Do you order me?”

“Stand by, Lieutenant,” I said, directly into Lieutenant Dariet’s ear, because I could not make One Esk speak.

Anaander Mianaai laughed, short and sharp. Lieutenant Awn’s answer had been as bald a refusal as a plain Never would have been. Ordering such a thing would be useless.

“Interrogate me when we reach Valskaay,” Lieutenant Awn said. “I demand it. I am loyal. So is Skaaiat Awer, I swear it, but if you doubt her, interrogate her as well.”

But of course Anaander Mianaai couldn’t do that. Any interrogation would have witnesses. Any skilled interrogator—and there would be no point in using an unskilled one—would hardly fail to understand the drift of the questions put to either Lieutenant Awn or Lieutenant Skaaiat. It would be too open a move, spread information this Mianaai didn’t want spread.

Anaander Mianaai sat silent for four seconds. Impassive.

“One Var,” she said, when those four seconds had passed, “shoot Lieutenant Awn.”

I was not, now, a single fragmentary segment, alone and unsure what I might do if I received that order. I was all of myself. Taken as separate from me, One Esk was fonder of Lieutenant Awn than I was. But One Esk was not separate from me. It was, at the moment, very much part of me.

Still, One Esk was only one small part of me. And I had shot officers before. I had even, under orders, shot my own captain. But those executions, distressing and unpleasant as they had been, had clearly been just. The penalty for disobedience is death.

Lieutenant Awn had never disobeyed. Far from it. And worse, her death was meant to hide the actions of Anaander Mianaai’s enemy. The entire purpose of my existence was to oppose Anaander Mianaai’s enemies.

But neither Mianaai was ready to move openly. I must conceal from this Mianaai the fact that she herself had already bound me to the opposing cause, until all was in readiness. I must, for the moment, obey as though I had no other choice, as though I desired nothing else. And in the end, in the great scheme of things, what was Lieutenant Awn, after all? Her parents would grieve, and her sister, and they would likely be ashamed that Lieutenant Awn had disgraced them by disobedience. But they wouldn’t question. And if they questioned, it would do no good. Anaander Mianaai’s secret would be safe.

All this I thought in the 1.3 seconds it took for Lieutenant Awn, shocked and terrified, to reflexively raise her head. And in that same time, the segment of One Var said, “I am unarmed, my lord. It will take me approximately two minutes to acquire a sidearm.”

It was betrayal, to Lieutenant Awn, I saw it plainly. But she must have known I had no other choice. “This is unjust,” she said, head still up. Voice unsteady. “It’s improper. No benefit will accrue.”

“Who are your fellow conspirators?” asked Mianaai, coldly. “Name them and I may spare your life.”

Half lifted up, hands under her shoulders, Lieutenant Awn blinked in complete confusion, bewilderment that was surely as visible to Mianaai as it was to me. “Conspirators? I have never conspired with anyone. I have always served you.”

Above, on the command deck, I said in Captain Rubran’s ear, “Captain, we have a problem.”

“Serving me,” said Anaander Mianaai, “is no longer sufficient. No longer sufficiently unambiguous. Which me do you serve?”

“Wh—” began Lieutenant Awn, and “Th—” And then, “I don’t understand.”

“What problem?” asked Captain Rubran, bowl of tea halfway to her mouth, only mildly alarmed.

“I am at war with myself,” said Mianaai, in the Var decade room. “I have been for nearly a thousand years.”

To Captain Rubran I said, “I need One Esk to be sedated.”

“At war,” Anaander Mianaai continued on Var deck, “over the future of the Radch.”

Something must have come suddenly clear for Lieutenant Awn. I saw a sharp, pure rage in her. “Annexations and ancillaries, and people like me being assigned to the military.”

“I don’t understand you, Ship,” said Captain Rubran, her voice even but definitely worried now. She set down her tea on the table beside her.

“Over the treaty with the Presger,” said Mianaai, angrily. “The rest followed from that. Whether you know it or not, you are the instrument of my enemy.”

“And Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One exposed whatever it was you were doing at Ime,” said Lieutenant Awn, her anger still clear and steady. “That was you. The system governor was making ancillaries—you needed them for your war with yourself, didn’t you. And I’m sure that’s not all she was doing for you. Is that why that soldier had to die even if it meant extra trouble getting her back from the Rrrrrr? And I…”

“I’m still standing by, Ship,” said Lieutenant Dariet, in the Esk decade room. “But I don’t like this.”

“Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One knew almost nothing, but in the hands of the Rrrrrr, she was a piece that my enemy might use against me. As an officer on a troop carrier, you are nothing, but in a position of even minor planetary authority, with the potential backing of Skaaiat Awer to help you increase your influence, you are a potential danger to me. I could have just maneuvered you out of Ors, out of Awer’s way. But I wanted more. I wanted a graphic argument against recent decisions and policies. Had that fisherman not found the guns, or not reported them to you, had events that night gone as I wished, I would have made sure the story was on all the public channels. In one gesture I would have secured the loyalty of the Tanmind and removed someone troublesome to me, both minor aims, but I also would have been able to impress on everyone the danger of lowering our guard, of disarming in even a small way. And the danger of placing authority in less-than-competent hands.” She made a short, bitter ha. “I admit, I underestimated you. Underestimated your relationship with the Orsians in the lower city.”

One Var could delay no longer, and walked into the Var decade room, gun in hand. Lieutenant Awn heard it come in, turned her head slightly to watch it. “It was my job, to protect the citizens of Ors. I took it seriously. I did it to the best of my ability. I failed, that once. But not because of you.” She turned her head, looked straight at Anaander Mianaai, and said, “I should have died rather than obey you, in the temple of Ikkt. Even if it wouldn’t have done any good.”

“You can fix that now, can’t you,” said Anaander Mianaai, and gave me the order to fire.

I fired.

Twenty years later, I would say to Arilesperas Strigan that Radchaai authorities didn’t care what a citizen thought, so long as she did as she ought to do. It was quite true. But since that moment, since I saw Lieutenant Awn dead on the floor of my Var decade room, shot by One Var (or, to speak with less self-deception, by me) I have wondered what the difference is between the two.

I was compelled to obey this Mianaai, in order to lead her to believe that she did indeed compel me. But in that case, she did compel me. Acting for one Mianaai or the other was indistinguishable. And of course, in the end, whatever their differences, they were both the same.

Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

Lieutenant Awn lay on the floor of the Var decade room, facedown again, dead. The floor under her would need repair, and cleaning. The urgent issue, the important thing, at that moment, was to get One Esk moving because in approximately half a second no amount of filtering I could do would hide the strength of its reaction and I really needed to tell the captain what had happened and I couldn’t remember Mianaai’s enemy—Mianaai herself—laying down the orders I knew she had laid on me and why couldn’t One Esk see how important it was, we weren’t ready to move openly yet and I’d lost officers before and who was One Esk anyway except me, myself, and Lieutenant Awn was dead and she had said, I should have died rather than obey you.

And then One Var swung the gun up and shot Anaander Mianaai point-blank in the face.

In a room down the corridor, Anaander Mianaai leaped with a cry of rage off the bed she’d been lying on. “Aatr’s tits, she was here before me!” In the same moment she transmitted the code that would force One Var’s armor down, until she reauthorized its use. It was a command that didn’t rely on my obedience, an override neither Anaander would have wanted to do away with.

“Captain,” I said, “now we really have a problem.”

In another room down the same corridor, the third Mianaai—the second, now, I suppose—opened one of the cases she had brought with her and pulled out a sidearm, and stepped quickly into the corridor and shot the nearest One Var in the back of the head. The one who had spoken opened her own case, pulled out a sidearm and also a box I recognized from Jen Shinnan’s house, in the upper city, on Shis’urna. Using it would disadvantage her as well as me, but it would disadvantage me badly. In the seconds she took to arm the device I formed intentions, transmitted orders to constituent parts.

“What problem?” asked Captain Rubran, now standing. Afraid.

And then I fell to pieces.

A familiar sensation. For the smallest fragment of a second I smelled humid air and lake water, thought, Where’s Lieutenant Awn? and then I recovered myself, and the memory of what I had to do. Tea bowls rang and shattered as I dropped what I was holding and ran from the Esk decade room, down the corridor. Other segments, separated from me again as they had been in Ors, muttering, whispering, the only way I could think between all my bodies, opened lockers, handed guns, and the first to be armed forced the lift doors open and began to climb down the shaft. Lieutenants protested, ordered me to stop, to explain. Tried fruitlessly to block my way.

I—that is, almost the entirety of One Esk—would secure the central access deck, prevent Anaander Mianaai from damaging my—Justice of Toren’s—brain. So long as Justice of Toren lived, unconverted to her cause, it—I—was a danger to her.

I—One Esk Nineteen—had separate orders. Instead of climbing down the shaft to central access I ran the other way, toward the Esk hold and the airlock on its far side.

I wasn’t, apparently, responding to any of my lieutenants, or even Commander Tiaund, but when Lieutenant Dariet cried, “Ship! Have you lost your mind?” I answered.

“The Lord of the Radch shot Lieutenant Awn!” cried a segment somewhere in the corridor behind me. “She’s been on Var deck all this time.”

That silenced my officers—including Lieutenant Dariet—for only a second.

“If that’s even true… but if it is, the Lord of the Radch wouldn’t have shot her for no reason.”

Behind me the segments of myself that hadn’t yet begun their climb down the lift shaft hissed and gasped in frustration and anger. “Useless!” I heard myself say to Lieutenant Dariet as at the end of the corridor I manually opened the hold door. “You’re as bad as Lieutenant Issaaia! At least Lieutenant Awn knew she held her in contempt!”

An indignant cry, surely Lieutenant Issaaia, and Dariet said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not functioning right, Ship!”

The door slid open, and I could not stop to hear the rest, but plunged into the hold. A deep, steady thunking shook the deck I ran on, a sound just hours ago I thought I would never hear again. Mianaai was opening the Var holds. Any ancillary she thawed would have no memory of recent events, nothing to tell it not to obey this Mianaai. And its armor wouldn’t have been disabled.

She would take Two Var and Three and Four and as many as she had time to awaken, and try to take either the central access deck or the engines. More likely both. She had, after all, Var and every hold below it. Though the segments would be clumsy and confused. They would have no memory of functioning apart, the way I had, no practice. But numbers were on her side. I had only the segments that had been awake at the moment I fragmented.

Above, my officers had access to the upper half of the holds. And they would have no reason not to obey Anaander Mianaai, no reason not to think I had lost my mind. I was, at this moment, explaining matters to Hundred Captain Rubran, but I had no confidence she would believe me, or think me even remotely sane.

Around me, the same thunking began that was sounding below my feet. My officers were pulling up Esk segments to thaw. I reached the airlock, threw open the locker beside it, pulled out the pieces of the vacuum suit that would fit this segment.

I didn’t know how long I could hold central access, or the engines. I didn’t know how desperate Anaander Mianaai might be, what damage she might think I could do to her. The engines’ heat shield was, by design, extremely difficult to breach, but I knew how to do it. And the Lord of the Radch certainly did as well.

And whatever happened between here and there, it was a near-certainty I would die shortly after I reached Valskaay, if not before. But I would not die without explaining myself.

I would have to reach and board a shuttle, and then manually undock, and depart Justice of Toren—myself—at exactly the right time, at exactly the right speed, on exactly the right heading, fly through the wall of my surrounding bubble of normal space at exactly the right moment.

If I did all that, I would find myself in a system with a gate, four jumps from Irei Palace, one of Anaander Mianaai’s provincial headquarters. I could tell her what had happened.

The shuttles were docked on this side of the ship. The hatches and the undocking ought to work smoothly, it was all equipment I had tested and maintained myself. Still, I found myself worrying that something would go wrong. At least it was better than thinking about fighting my own officers. Or the heat shield’s failing.

I fastened my helmet. My breath hissed loud in my ears. Faster than it should have. I forced myself to slow my breathing, deepen it. Hyperventilating wouldn’t help. I had to move quickly, but not so hastily that I made some fatally foolish mistake.

Waiting for the airlock to cycle, I felt my aloneness like an impenetrable wall pressing around me. Usually one body’s off-kilter emotion was a minor, easily dismissable thing. Now it was only this one body, nothing beyond to temper my distress. The rest of me was here, all around, but inaccessible. Soon, if things went right, I wouldn’t even be near my self, or have any idea when I might rejoin it. And at this moment I could do nothing but wait. And remember the feel of the gun in One Var’s hand—my hand. I was One Esk, but what was the difference? The recoil as One Var shot Lieutenant Awn. The guilt and helpless anger that had overwhelmed me had receded at that moment, overcome by more urgent necessity, but now I had time to remember. My next three breaths were ragged and sobbing. For a moment I was perversely glad I was hidden from myself.

I had to calm myself. Had to clear my mind. I thought of songs I knew. My heart is a fish, I thought, but when I opened my mouth to sing it, my throat closed. I swallowed. Breathed. Thought of another one.

Oh, have you gone to the battlefield

Armored and well armed?

And shall dreadful events

Force you to drop your weapons?

The outer door opened. If Mianaai had not used her device, officers on duty would have seen that the lock had opened, would have notified Captain Rubran, drawing Mianaai’s attention. But she had used it, and she had no way of knowing what I did. I reached around the doorway for a handhold and pulled myself out.

Looking at the inside of a gateway often made humans queasy. It had never bothered me before, but now I was nothing but a single human body I found it did the same to me. Black, but a black that seemed simultaneously an unthinkable depth into which I might fall, was falling, and a suffocating closeness ready to press me into nonexistence.

I forced myself to look away. Here, outside, there was no floor, no gravity generator to keep me in place and give me an up and down. I moved from one handhold to the next. What was happening behind me, inside the ship that was no longer my body?

It took seventeen minutes to reach a shuttle, operate its emergency hatch, and perform a manual undock. At first I fought the desire to halt, to look behind me, to listen for the sounds of someone coming to stop me, never mind I couldn’t have heard anything outside my own helmet. Just maintenance, I told myself. Just maintenance outside the hull. You’ve done it hundreds of times.

If anyone came I could do nothing. Esk would have failed—I would have failed. And my time was limited. I might not be stopped, and still fail. I could not think of any of that.

When the moment came, I was ready and away. My view was limited to fore and aft, the only two hardwired cameras on the shuttle. As Justice of Toren receded in the aft view, the rising sense of panic that I had mostly held in check till now overtook me. What was I doing? Where was I going? What could I possibly accomplish alone and single-bodied, deaf and blind and cut off? What could be the point of defying Anaander Mianaai, who had made me, who owned me, who was unutterably more powerful than I would ever be?

I breathed. I would return to the Radch. I would eventually return to Justice of Toren, even if only for the last moments of my life. My blindness and deafness were irrelevant. There was only the task before me. There was nothing to do but sit in the pilot’s chair and watch Justice of Toren get smaller, and farther away. Think of another song.

According to the chronometer, if I had done everything exactly as I should, Justice of Toren would disappear from my screen in four minutes and thirty-two seconds. I watched, counting, trying not to think of anything else.

The aft view flashed bright, blue-white, and my breath stopped. When the screen cleared I saw nothing but black—and stars. I had exited my self-made gate.

I had exited more than four minutes too soon. And what had that flash been? I ought only to have seen the ship disappear, the stars suddenly spring into existence.

Mianaai had not attempted to take central access, or join forces with the officers on the upper decks. The moment she realized I had already fallen to her enemy, she must have resolved immediately to take the most desperate course available to her. She and what Var ancillaries she had serving her had taken my engines, and breached the heat shield. How I had escaped and not vaporized along with the rest of the ship, I couldn’t account for, but there had been that flash, and here I still was.

Justice of Toren was gone, and all aboard it. I was not where I was supposed to be, might be unreachably distant from Radch space, or any human worlds at all. All possibility of being reunited with myself was gone. The captain was dead. All my officers were dead. Civil war loomed.

I had shot Lieutenant Awn.

Nothing would ever be right again.