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.

“Which do you think is more dangerous, the mathematician our entire way of life is chained to, or a mere general with a gift for self-destruction?”

“As if ‘dangerous’ is something you can measure on a single axis,”

“Someday I would like to live in a world where people can aspire to something better than caskets and being sewn up with birds and quick deaths.” “If you want to fight for that, the swarm is yours.” “I’d say that I’ll try not to abuse the privilege,” Jedao said, “but we’re past that point.” Khiruev stood with him after that, wondering when she had started to see Jedao as a human being and not a death sentence.

“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.

Over her lifetime, Khiruev had failed at all her relationships. She hadn’t dated until she was in her thirties; had only managed a single short-lived, dismal marriage. Or maybe it had started earlier, with the mawkish tone poem she had composed for an alt when she was fourteen, only to think better of ever playing it for anyone. (She still remembered every note.)

*weeps*

“All right,” Mikodez said, remembering what he’d jotted down in the notes to his own procedures for dealing with aggravated employees—except Istradez was also family. Deescalate.

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.

“I wish to serve, sir,” Brezan said hoarsely. “It’s all I know.”

It looked like the universe was giving him another chance at Jedao. All he had to do was not fuck it up.

“I know you like to think that there was some cunning pattern back then we ought to have picked up on, but face it, we make a point of recruiting people who are comfortable getting friendly with others only to stab them in the kidneys. Some of them are even decent, helpful human beings who just want to rescue kittens in distress and the occasional hostage. With Jedao we got unlucky. It’s not like he’s the only Shuos to prove unstable, given the personality traits we select for, even if he happens to be one of the more destructive of the bunch.”

He could transmute that all-consuming guilt into a desire to make amends.

Immortality didn’t turn you into a monster. It merely showed you what kind of monster you already were.

You are people first. You deserve a chance to choose.

“Brezan,” Tseya said, “Brezan. We’re fighting in our own way.” Hopeless to explain to her that being a Kel wasn’t about fighting in your own way, as he had done during Exercise Purple 53. It was about fighting the same way as all the other Kel.

“I don’t care if Cheris never had a chance against the hexarchs. I wanted to die having seen that someone believed in a better world enough to fight for it.”

In the dramas people shied from Shuos assassins and saboteurs, but the ones you had to watch out for were the bureaucrats.

He was looking distractedly at his palms when the world dissolved in a rush of heat and static.