Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,56

that she would understand. “The first time so many Radchaai officers came away from an annexation without the certainty that they had done the right thing. Do you still think Mianaai controls the Radchaai through brainwashing or threats of execution? Those are there, they exist, yes, but most Radchaai, like people most places I have been, do what they’re supposed to because they believe it’s the right thing to do. No one likes killing people.”

Strigan made a sardonic noise. “No one?”

“Not many,” I amended. “Not enough to fill the Radch’s warships. But at the end, after all the blood and grief, all those benighted souls who without us would have suffered in darkness are happy citizens. They’ll agree if you ask! It was a fortunate day when Anaander Mianaai brought civilization to them.”

“Would their parents agree? Or their grandparents?”

I gestured, halfway between not my problem and not relevant. “You were surprised to see me deal gently with a child. It should not have surprised you. Do you think the Radchaai don’t have children, or don’t love their children? Do you think they don’t react to children the way nearly any human does?”

“So virtuous!”

“Virtue is not a solitary, uncomplicated thing.” Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked. “Virtues may be made to serve whatever end profits you. Still, they exist and will influence your actions. Your choices.”

Strigan snorted. “You make me nostalgic for the drunken philosophical conversations of my youth. But these are not abstract things we’re talking about here, this is life and death.”

My chances of getting what I had come for were slipping from my grasp. “For the first time, Radch forces dealt death on an unimaginable scale without renewal afterward. Cut off irrevocably any chance of good coming from what they had done. This affected everyone there.”

“Even the ships?”

“Everyone.” I waited for the next question, or the sardonic I don’t feel sorry for you, but she just sat silent, looking at me. “The first attempts at diplomatic contact with the Presger began shortly afterward. As did, I am fairly certain, the beginnings of the move to replace ancillaries with human soldiers.” Only fairly certain because much of the groundwork must have been laid in private, behind the scenes.

“Why would the Presger get involved with Garsedd?” Strigan asked.

She could certainly see my reaction to her question, nearly a direct admission that she had the gun; had to know—had to have known before she spoke—what that admission would tell me. She wouldn’t have asked that question if she hadn’t seen the gun, examined it closely. Those guns had come from the Presger, the Garseddai had dealt with the aliens, whoever had made the first overture. So much we got from the captured representatives. But I kept my face still. “Who knows why the Presger do anything? But Anaander Mianaai asked herself the same question, Why did the Presger interfere? It wasn’t because they wanted anything the Garseddai had, they could have reached out and taken whatever they wanted.” Though I knew the Presger had made the Garseddai pay, and heavily. “And what if the Presger decided to destroy the Radch? Truly to destroy it? And the Presger had such weapons?”

“You’re saying,” said Strigan, disbelieving, appalled, “that the Presger set the Garseddai up in order to compel Anaander Mianaai to negotiate.”

“I am speaking of Mianaai’s reaction, Mianaai’s motives. I don’t know or understand the Presger. But I imagine if the Presger meant to compel anything, it would be unmistakable. Unsubtle. I think it was meant merely as a suggestion. If indeed that had anything to do with their actions.”

“All of that, a suggestion.”

“They’re aliens. Who can understand them?”

“Nothing you can do,” she said, after five seconds of silence, “can possibly make any difference.”

“That’s probably true.”

“Probably.”

“If everyone who had…” I searched for the right words. “If everyone who objected to the destruction of the Garseddai had refused, what would have happened?”

Strigan frowned. “How many refused?”

“Four.”

“Four. Out of…?”

“Out of thousands.” Each Justice alone, in those days, had hundreds of officers, along with its captain, and dozens of us had been there. Add the smaller-crewed Mercies and Swords. “Loyalty, the long habit of obedience, a desire for revenge—even, yes, those four deaths kept anyone else from such a drastic choice.”

“There were enough of your sort to deal with even everyone refusing.”

I said nothing, waited for the change of expression that would tell me she had thought twice about what she had just said. When it came,