Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

by Yoon Ha Lee

His proper loyalty belonged to Kel Command, not an upstart undead Shuos general possessing a Kel captain.

“How do you tell the difference between a violin and a Kel?” She knew the answer to that one. “The Kel burns longer.”

Brezan’s bunkmate, an engineering candidate, liked to read trashy adventures set in the bowels of the campus. They inevitably involved rogue killer robots, the occasional talking ferret, and plucky cadets who never ran out of ammunition. Brezan had tried some and found them unnaturally compulsive reading.

I am charmed by books that reference fictional books.

“As they used to say at Shuos Academy, ‘Counterfactuals never feed the children’.

“Tell me,” Mikodez said in exasperation, “what the hell would you do if there weren’t a war on?” Jedao faltered. For a moment his eyes were wrenchingly young. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how to do anything else.” Which meant, although there was no way that Jedao was ready to admit it to himself, that he’d start a war just to have something to do.

“I was never tempted to contract for children,” Khiruev said. “I don’t feel strongly about them one way or another. They’re loud and messy”—she’d never forget the expression on Mother Ekesra’s face that time she’d shorted out one of her pastry machines—”but if they weren’t like that there’d be something wrong with them.”

“Shenner has a very touchy ego. Which makes it difficult to suggest that she get some more therapy for it. The problem is, she’s obsessive, paranoid, and loyal, all of which make her excellent at her job—and all of which mean that I have to handle her very delicately. Best to leave things as they are.”

You couldn’t pull the hexarchate apart and exchange it for something better. The fact that the heretics always lost was proof of that. So you had to do the next best thing, the only thing left: serve, and hope that serving honorably made some small difference.

“You look like you think the food’s rigged to blow,” Tseya remarked. “Alas, I’m only mediocre at demolitions, which was a great disappointment to my instructors. Do sit down, there’s no sense going hungry while we size each other up.”

Tseya kept referring to it as the Deuce of Gears swarm. This was correct, but Brezan felt that sometimes reality needed a kick in the teeth, even if it was only in your head, and called it the Swanknot swarm to himself.

“Have you given the mathematicians their marching orders?” “It’s embarrassing that you’re asking,” Zehun said. “Of course I have. I’m also giving them whatever the hell they want for breakfast because I’m sure you don’t want to rely on cranky mathematicians for urgently important policy results.”

Granted, Kujen is psychotic so I don’t expect any better from him, but what good is immortality if nothing has been done to repair the fault lines in the human heart?”

Echoes of Solzheneitsyn?

The only thing people hated seeing more than a Shuos with a gun was a Shuos with knitting needles. As if any sane assassin would take you out with knitting needles if they could do it instead from a nice sheltered balcony with a high-powered rifle.