Author's Note: My Yuletide assignment this year was Imperial Radch for susanoo-no-mikoto, and I could not have been happier with it! This was a ton of fun to write; I'm only sorry I didn't have time to write at least 10k more of it, haha. I just love Mercy of Kalr and Breq so much...
What's Caught Is Gone
Losing my ancillaries was not a long process. Medic began the work in the morning, at the start of what should have been Bo decade's shift, and by the end of Amaat's shift my only body was the ship itself; I was no longer Kalr and Amaat and Etrepa and Bo, only Mercy of Kalr.
The process was simple as well. I sent each segment in to Medic, to lie on her table and have the ancillary implants removed. When my control cut out and they began to jerk and seize, Medic would activate restraints and finish the removal, then dose each now-useless body with a quick poison. After they stopped moving, Medic and the next segment to be deactivated would wrestle the body off the table to send it to disposal, and the segment would lie down, and I would shut its eyes so that Medic could begin the procedure again...
My last body was Kalr Twenty. I cannot say that I had ever spent much time observing the appearance of my segments, except to make sure their uniforms were clean and neat and fit appropriately. Yet after Kalr Nineteen had been sent to disposal, I as Kalr Twenty stood beside the table and observed myself. It was not a particularly interesting body; the hair was limp and dull black with some grey in it, the skin was rather too pale, and the build was strong and sturdy but not outstanding in any way, with short-fingered hands. The eyes, at least, were a striking dark grey, although looking through them gave only the same visual data as any other standard set of functioning eyes.
Medic had been working for two shifts straight at that point, and she was swaying a little where she stood and blinking often. I am sure she wanted nothing more than to eat something and then sleep, but she didn't reach out to Kalr Twenty to guide it to the table, or speak to tell me to hurry up.
Finally, I laid Kalr Twenty down on Medic's table and closed its grey eyes so that Medic could work. She was a little slow, but her hands were steady as they performed the same set of motions she had been going through for hours. My connections to the body flared with pain as they were severed; the limbs flailed once I could no longer suppress the body's need to move, to escape the pain, though there was not enough of its independent mental functioning left to know where it was or what was happening to it. Medic struggled to keep it on the table and fasten it down without my aid, and a human soldier rushed in to help her force it into restraints.
When Medic was done, I watched through sensors only as the new human Kalrs carried my last body away.
That day when I lost my ancillaries had been forty-four years ago. In the present, Kalr One and Three were cooking dinner for the fleet captain, her guest Basnaaid, and Lieutenant Tisarwat while the remaining Kalrs not on Athoek Station ate, my Etrepas stood watch and cleaned my decks, my Bos with the exception of Nine slept, and my Amaats were exercising or resting or in the bath, singing to themselves. I passed as much of this as I could on to Fleet Captain Breq; I also sent a request to Station for a status update on the citizen Uran, which would have a slight delay but please Breq to remain aware of.
Amaat Six had just left the bath and gone to Lieutenant Seivarden's room to see if she needed anything. "No, nothing," Seivarden said absently, and then, "Wait. I want to talk to Ship."
"Sir," Amaat Six said, and she stood at attention as I provided words for her to speak. "What is it, Lieutenant?"
"Can you believe Breq reprimanded me for saving her life?" She crossed her arms briefly, rubbing her elbows, then deliberately uncrossed them and clasped the edge of her bed. "As if keeping a fleet captain alive wouldn't be anyone's priority, even leaving our personal feelings out of it..."
Station replied to my request with a snapshot of Citizen Uran's current physical status and the message that she was making herself useful in the Undergarden, mostly helping Security or Kalr Five, and her accent in Radchaai was improving at a rapid rate with practice. I sent this information to Captain Breq, who received it with qualified pleasure - it would be good for Uran to find a place on the station, since we had no room for a civilian, but perhaps Captain Breq had been thinking of ways for her to stay with us despite that - and said to Seivarden, "It's possible the fleet captain is still adjusting to the fact she isn't considered expendable."
Seivarden breathed out heavily through her nose, but her irritation was only skin-deep. "She must know by now that I - that all of us - feel quite differently."
"Some habits of thought," I said, "are difficult to break." The safety of my ancillaries had always come a distant second to that of my officers, favored or not. It was a very rare officer who took much notice of individual segments.
In the medical bay, Bo Nine said to Tisarwat, "Begging your pardon, sir, but the fleet captain would like to know if you're willing to dine with her and Horticulturist Basnaaid."
Tisarwat's emotions spiked, as expected, giddiness and guilt in a dizzying spiral; she swallowed them, flicked off the music I had selected for her when she hadn't been able to choose, and said, "I'm honored to accept her invitation."
"I suppose," Lieutenant Seivarden said, and then she gestured reluctant agreement. "No, you're entirely right, and I should know it. Still, the nerve of her, after that stunt she pulled on Nilt - she ought to expect better from me, anyway!"
On watch in the shuttle bay, Etrepa Three said to Etrepa Nine, "You're humming the Amaat's song again."
"Var's balls, really?" Etrepa Nine said. "It gets into your head, it does. Maybe we should have a song of our own, pay them back a little."
"What, like Bo and their tree?"
"Oh, I think we can do better than Bo, don't you?"
"She'll probably have us retrieving those mines we dropped," Lieutenant Seivarden said, "since Sword of Atagaris wasn't kind enough to clean them up for us. Not the worst punishment she could give, at that..." She laughed a little. "If she was planning on punishing me further and I haven't just given her the idea. Are you reporting this conversation to her?"
I wasn't; Captain Breq would want all of her attention on Basnaaid for the moment, and on Tisarwat when she arrived. "Would you like me to?"
"No, thank you." She yawned. "But tell her I volunteer Amaat for mine-picking duty, anyway. We could use some vacuum suit practice."
Amaat Six kept her outward composure, but I could read her unease clearly. She had passed the qualifications for extravehicular work, of course, but it had always been her least favorite task, or so she'd once confessed to Amaat Nine. "Too dark out there for me," she had said, "even when you've got a good light."
"Noted, Lieutenant," she said for me, and in the shuttle bay Etrepa Nine sang a fragment of poetry to Three, Black and blue and green and red are the fish in a basket in the river.
"Who wants to sing about fish all the time?" Etrepa Three said.
"No, let me finish - love is a fish you must keep in the river, or its colors all turn brown."
"Mmm. I don't think it'll stick. Here's one my aunt taught me..."
That I did send to Captain Breq, during a brief silence as she and Basnaaid waited on Tisarwat, along with Seivarden's request, which the fleet captain acknowledged and granted.
"Will that be all?" I asked Lieutenant Seivarden.
"Yes, that's all," she said, and she lay down, dismissing Amaat Six with another gesture. "Good night, Ship."
"Sleep well, Lieutenant."
Horticulturist Basnaaid was saying, "You know, it seems to me that the way you've handled things here - it reminds me of the way my sister talked about Ors, and the problems she ran into. At least the parts she saw fit to write home about, I suppose."
Those words struck Captain Breq hard and unexpected, and her face for a moment fell into true ancillary blankness. She struggled for an appropriate expression, small movements flickering across her features, until she settled back into a more human neutrality and hid her surprise behind a sip of tea. Perhaps the idea had not occurred to her before - it was a new thought to me as well - that when given a power she had never possessed, she might follow the example of a favored officer. Finally she said, "I hadn't thought of it in quite that way. But I think that I could not receive a higher compliment from anyone."
Bo Nine was helping Tisarwat into her dress uniform as Kalr Three snuck a little extra seasoning into Kalr One's soup, and Etrepa Three sang in an impressively high, clear voice, On ice it's easy to fall when you walk, on a ship you'll break your head, but in the void you'll land in the stars.
I gave these moments to Breq, with as much detail as I could; I only wished that I could share more. Share it all, as she deserved.
The recovery of mines is a delicate and careful task, with very little room for error; I gated us within a reasonable distance of the area where they had been dumped, and Amaat decade flew shuttles the rest of the way, to avoid setting any of them off. Lieutenant Seivarden had lectured her decade severely on the proper method, but four hours of slow, cautious drifting through space to punch in each individual disarm code and carry each separate mine back to the shuttles, with at least four more hours of work still to come, had inspired in the decade a certain recklessness. "At this point, I'd rather get blown to bits than spend another minute out there, anyway," Amaat Six said to Amaat Ten as they wrestled their fourth mine into its place in a storage container.
Ten shrugged, saying, "I like it. Nice and quiet, and you feel so light..."
"Sure, so light you'll just float away and they'll never find you in all that darkness!" Amaat Six shuddered in her vacuum suit. "No, thanks. Let's finish and get back inside Ship fast as we can. Think we can get two in for every one that Eight and Four catch?" Eight and Four were working in the same area of the field, and Four was currently inputting a disarm code for one mine with the lightest touch possible - so light that not every symbol registered, and had to be pushed again.
"What's the point?" Ten said. "No one's getting a prize for speed."
Lieutenant Seivarden, from her supervisory position in the second shuttle's cockpit, chose this moment to declare on an open channel that whichever pair of soldiers brought in the most mines would receive an extra ration of fruit with their meals for the next three days.
Six gestured clumsily and said, "What about now?"
"Huh, I guess that does change things..." Ten pushed off from the shuttle's hull, gliding back towards the mines, and a moment later Six followed her, pushing down her nerves.
Amaat Four was still painstakingly typing in the code for the same mine, her and Eight's third; Seven and Three were guiding their sixth mine to the shuttle, Nine and Five disarming their seventh, and One and Two were tracking the inventory and complaining to each other about getting left out of the competition. "Unless someone's willing to switch with us, anyway," Two said glumly, "and that's not likely." Her appetite for sweet fruit was legendary in Amaat decade.
"I wouldn't have volunteered for inventory if I'd known, for sure," said Amaat One. She sighed and waved at Seven and Three, inching their way towards their shuttle. "Sometimes it seems like things don't get decided till later than they ought to be."
"At least when it comes to decade rewards," Two said. "When it's about taking care of Sir, there's not a moment wasted."
"Ah, well, I wouldn't complain about that..."
"No, definitely not. Still, do you think someone had to give her the idea this time?"
In fact, Lieutenant Ekalu had called Seivarden a few minutes before to check in prior to sleeping, and suggested the prize when Seivarden complained about how long the job was taking. Ekalu had settled very well into her recent promotion to decade lieutenant; I made sure to tell her so, after she had finished talking to Lieutenant Seivarden, and she was smiling as her breathing slowed into its usual sleeping rhythm.
Captain Breq had not explicitly told me how Justice of Toren had felt about Lieutenant Seivarden, but I had a pretty good idea. I was probably quite lucky to have met her only now, when she was severe but fair and usually thought before she spoke.
"Quit pecking at that thing like it's a bubble and enter the code!" Eight hissed at Four. "We're already well behind the others."
"You heard the lieutenant. I'm just being careful so we don't get blown all the way back to the station." Four peered down at the keypad and gently pressed the final symbol, which failed to activate.
"Aatr's tits, it's a ship mine, it's not going to blow from you pressing the disarm code buttons!" Eight had little taste for fruit, I knew, preferring spicy flavors to sweet, but she had fought for top rankings with a viciously narrow focus in all previous decade competitions. "I'm disarming the next one."
Four pressed the last symbol again, this time hard enough for it to light up and the mine to fold in on itself. "There, see, we're fine," she said, and Eight slapped a tow cable on the shell.
Nine and Five had already caught up to Seven and Three, and they brought their pair of mines in together, the four of them humming in turns over their suit channels. The planet goes around the sun, it all goes around...
Fleet Captain Breq listened to my recording of them as she bathed, and under her breath sang as well, My mother told me it all goes around.
I gated back to Athoek Station after the mines had all been retrieved, though I arrived at a greater distance from the station than when I and Lieutenant Seivarden had come to save Captain Breq. The trip was short, and I was glad to be in range for quick communication with the Kalrs on the station again.
Upon arrival, Bo decade was just coming off their watch shift, which Etrepa would be taking over; Bo One and Nine accompanied Lieutenant Tisarwat, who had just stood her first watch since the Undergarden incident, on the way back to Medical. Tisarwat's ribs were healing nicely, but Medic wanted to check on her anyway, and not only her ribs. I re-established contact with Kalr Five and the others we had left on the station, as well as with Station itself, who reported nothing of concern, and gave the data to Captain Breq.
Bo One, once Tisarwat had gone in to Medic, said to Nine, "Do you have it ready?"
"Yes, I got everything arranged before breakfast," Nine said. "Ship, are you sure Sir's all right with it?"
"She is," I assured both of them. It was only a small thing that Bo had planned, and Captain Breq had approved it immediately.
Inside Medical, Tisarwat held still and let Medic fuss over her with outward calm. Her readings boiled with guilt and shame that had barely faded in the last two days, and a deep restlessness ran through her nerves, a need to act which the medication barely touched.
"You seem stable enough on this combination so far," Medic said at last. "I'll check it again at the end of your next shift, but off with you now - you need to eat regularly, to help keep your body chemistry in balance."
"Understood," Tisarwat said; she took the meds she was given and left for the decade room for dinner. Despite her hunger, she walked slowly, and even stopped outside her tiny room for a moment, as if she would go straight to bed without eating. It was only for a moment, though, and then she went on.
The other lieutenants had eaten already, leaving the decade room to Tisarwat, Bo Nine, and Etrepa Three, who was cleaning up the last of Ekalu's breakfast. Etrepa Three exchanged glances with Bo Nine, then gathered up the last dish and vanished into the galley with her as Tisarwat sat down. When Bo Nine came back, she was balancing tea, a plate of fish and rice, and a small pot filled with earth that she placed next to the dinner plate.
Lieutenant Tisarwat had picked up her tea and taken a drink of it before she saw the pot. She blinked at it, setting the tea bowl down, and asked, "Nine? What's this?"
"Sir," Nine said. "Begging your pardon, it's a gift from all of us, we got it from the station just now. There's seeds in it for growing flowers - I don't rightly know what kind -" Bo Nine had lived on small stations or ships all her life; the plant she knew best was skel. "- and we thought, sir, since you like Horticulturist Basnaaid so much, you could grow them yourself for her. And it'll be good to have a little color in the decade room, if you want to keep them here, and everyone'll know it's thanks to you..."
My captain and I had both thought it was a fine idea; my decade room was adequate, but not very impressive, so the luxury of having even a small plant of its own would improve its atmosphere considerably. In addition, gardening was not known to be a particular hobby of Anaander Mianaai nor a previous interest of Tisarwat's, so it was unlikely to bear any bad associations - a fresh start, of a sort.
Lieutenant Tisarwat stared down at the pot, touching the damp surface of the dirt and pressing down on it lightly, then wiping her fingers clean. The jittering in her vital signs lessened only a little, but it was an improvement, and I shared it with Captain Breq.
"Thank you," Lieutenant Tisarwat said quietly, her voice steady. "And please pass my thanks on to the rest of Bo."
"Yes, sir, I will!" Nine's readings nearly glowed with a pleasure which only grew when Tisarwat began to eat, and she ducked back into the galley to fetch the sweet pastries she and Bo Seven had prepared as well.
On the station, Kalr Five was faced with an agonizing decision.
She hovered over the tea set boxes - all of which had survived the Undergarden's wreck intact - and muttered her dilemma to herself and me. On the one hand, we would be leaving the relative safety of Athoek Station for the unknown dangers on the other side of the Ghost Gate; it would be foolhardy to bring along the best dishes, instead of keeping them on the station. On the other hand, the risks of the Ghost Gate might be exaggerated, and whatever waited on its far end amenable to diplomacy, in which case obviously the finest dishes would be necessary for a show of wealth and power. But then again, our mystery opponents might be so out of touch or so alien that they wouldn't even appreciate a beautiful tea set. And yet, while Station was certainly as reliable as could be expected under the circumstances, one could never be entirely certain there wouldn't be another disaster, or some accident during the repairs, and of course Station didn't have proper eyes in the Undergarden yet...
"Why do you care so much?" Uran asked. She had been helping Kalr Five pack for her return to me, but her part had been long finished; she was sitting on top of the luggage and observing Five's indecision with wary curiosity.
"These are the fleet captain's best dishes," Kalr Five said patiently. "Priceless! A gift from the Lord of the Radch herself! If I don't take care of them properly it's disgraceful for me and her both."
"No, I know that by now," said Uran. "You care about them a lot more than the captain does, I don't understand why. Even if they're expensive."
Kalr Five touched the box with the plain white tea set gently and said, "Oh, well, that's hard to get at properly. I suppose I've always had an eye for nice things..."
She had for as long as she'd been assigned to me, certainly; one of her first acts aboard ship had been to impress Captain Osck with her appreciation of the captain's heirloom tea set, left behind in storage at Omaugh Station. Her family, while comfortably well-off, had neither great wealth nor any particular influence, but they dealt in a wide variety of art from various annexed worlds.
"My mother told me all the time that half the value of something was knowing exactly what it was and where it came from," Kalr Five said. "And once you know a thing that well, you can't help but care about it, I guess." She patted the tea set again. "When it's as precious as this, it's like - it's almost like clientage, in a way. You take the best care of it you can, and it'll bring you honor and respect and joy for as long as you have it."
Uran looked at the box with a critical eye, finally saying, "I don't get it."
"One day you'll find something you cherish," Kalr Five said confidently, "and it'll make more sense. Things aren't like people; you only get out of them what you're willing to put in."
I spoke quietly in her ear. "Shall I ask Fleet Captain Breq which dishes she wants to bring along?" She wouldn't have a preference, but the captain's approval for the correct set would mean a great deal to Kalr Five.
She hummed, tapping her cheek with two fingers as she looked at the boxes. "No, that won't be necessary, Ship," she said. "They'll all come. Better prepared than not - eh, Citizen?"
"I guess so," Uran said. "Do you need me still, or can I go help Station now?"
"Ah, run along, then, Station needs the extra hands more."
Uran hopped off the luggage and left for the Undergarden office where, according to Station, she was spending most of her time; Five started to hum again as she gathered up soft material to wrap the boxes in, the song that Captain Breq sang often and Bo decade had adopted as their own. It wasn't a song I had been familiar with, but she had translated the refrain for me when I asked: Memory is an event horizon; what's caught in it is gone, but it's still there.
As ships consider these matters, I am not especially old, but a thousand years of experience and a comprehensive database means I am very difficult to surprise. Meeting Justice of Toren for the first time in the form of its last remaining ancillary One Esk Nineteen during an uprising between two warring factions of Anaander Mianaai, however, was not something any of my previous experience had prepared me for. Considering the circumstances, I think that I handled it as well as any other ship might have, and better than some.
All of my decades were awake at the moment, scrubbing all the decks and checking every corner and crevice of me to make certain we were prepared for our trip through the Ghost Gate. Captain Breq could not physically participate, of course, because of her rank, but she sat in Command with a rose glass bowl of tea and Kalr Five hovering nearby should she need anything while I showed her the decades' progress: Bos inspecting my two shuttles, Amaats tallying up inventory, half the Kalrs exercising and on the firing range with the other half cleaning the baths and showers, Etrepas in the halls. The lieutenants worked hard beside them, and I was filled everywhere with a cacophony of music, hummed or sung or whistled. Medic grumbled a little as she swept her rooms; "So much noise, it's ridiculous," she muttered. "Who can think with all that going on? Not me..." But a moment later she was humming herself, a complicated tune I had often heard her listening to in her down time.
Captain Breq closed her eyes to concentrate on the streams of information, and I watched her closely so that I didn't overload her. Once it wouldn't have mattered. Once she would have been a part of that information, as connected to it all as a plant to its roots; once I would have been the many that cleaned my corridors and repaired my shuttles and brought my officers tea.
I could no longer have my own ancillaries, and Justice of Toren was lost. But this - having a captain who knew what I needed, who could understand what I saw - was, in its own unexpected way, good enough.
There was some time yet before the preparations would be complete and we left, but I asked, "Is everything well, Captain?"
Kalr Five refilled the tea bowl; Lieutenant Tisarwat was taking a short break from the shuttles to water her flower seeds, which had yet to sprout; Amaat Two was still trying to talk Five into sharing her fruit ration as they counted boxes of cleaning supplies; in the corridor outside Command, Etrepa Three sang, In the forest the soft leaves will catch you, on a ship there's a medic with correctives, but in the void you'll fall for the rest of your life.
"As well as I could hope for," Captain Breq said, so that only I could hear, and with that I was content.