Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)

by Yoon Ha Lee

“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,”

“—if I ever think it’s all right to do that to someone, shoot me. I don’t care how rational I make it sound. I have a history of sounding very rational, and we all know where that ends.”

“Kel Command would want them cleared,” she said to Jedao as they reviewed the scoutmoths’ latest updates from the command center, “but you are in the enviable position of not having to care what Kel Command wants.” “Well, that’s not true,” Jedao said, “since Kel Command understandably wants my head on a pointy stick. But yes.

Insultingly, she used the inanimate form of the second person pronoun. The high language had two, inanimate and animate, although it might be argued that the former applied to a general who was listed as a part of the Kel Arsenal—a weapon—rather than as a human officer.

Get over yourself, Brezan told himself. No one cares about your petty irrelevant scruples. But sometimes—sometimes he wished someone did.

“Unless you have some archaic problem with being a womanform?” “Shuos-zho,” Jedao said patiently, “I haven’t had a dick in four hundred years. I got over it fast, promise.”

No: it was that the hexarchate was a terrible place to live, but it would be an even worse one if no one with a conscience consented to serve it. 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.

They had to stop Jedao. They had to stop the Hafn. And, as a bonus, they had to stop Jedao from stopping the Hafn and making a hero of himself.

“I imagine Ragath thinks I’m going to conquer the galaxy and make it into a place where your superiors don’t randomly bomb an entire swarm just to off one person,” Jedao said. He tapped the token against the edge of the table. “I wish I could say this was a low bar for reform. However, our regime’s history argues otherwise.

Sarcasm to conceal the fact that that's exactly your plan...

“I still feel like he’s toying with us,” Zehun said. “Yes, that’s the point,” Mikodez said ruefully. “Now I know how everyone else feels.” “Don’t flatter yourself,” Zehun said, but they were smiling.

“Because you know what? It is a shitty system. We have a whole faction devoted to torturing people so the rest of us can pretend we’re not involved. Too bad every other system of government out there is even worse.

So similar to that old chestnut about democracy...

“We both know who you are,” Brezan said in his best temperate voice, which emerged as a croak. “You can stop pretending.” “That’s complicated,” Cheris said, “and anyway you’re confused as to who’s interrogating whom.

“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.”

It was a long time ago, but I remember. I would die before I forget. If I live forever, I will certainly forget.”

“I take it you were listening in on the whole thing.” “If you didn’t want to be spied on,” Zehun said unsympathetically, “you should have pursued a nice, quiet life as a hopper mechanic or a pastry chef.”

People will die, yes. A lot of them. But we don’t have to go out of our way to kill even more.” “I want to know how you came to this philosophy after having a mass murderer stuffed up your nose,” Brezan said. “I’m trying to fix the things he broke,” Cheris said, “because I remember breaking them.”

“I’ll resign,” Brezan said. “That will leave the Kel leaderless,” Cheris said. “Is that what you want to do?” “I hate it when you open your mouth,” Brezan said. “The things you say never make the situation better.”

“The price of a Shuos’s assistance is a Shuos’s assistance, isn’t that what they say?” Cheris remarked. Mikodez inclined his head. “I expect the only thing I’d regret more than saying yes is saying no.” “That was the idea,” Mikodez said modestly.

“If I tried to shoot every monster in the hexarchate,” Cheris said, “I’d be a monster myself.” Mikodez put his chin in his hands and smiled. “If you understand that,” he said, “then you’re far ahead of Jedao, and this alliance has a fighting chance.—Ah,

“How do you say ‘bored’?” Khiruev asked. The tutorials mostly assumed you wanted to know terms like ‘toxic fungus’ and ‘casualty.’

And people didn’t stop being people because they had choices. She had found a gun with which to fight. It remained to be seen whether anyone had the will to use it well.