Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,7
tense and wary despite having chosen to speak.
The head priest seemed bleakly, bitterly amused. “News from Ime is meant to inspire confidence in Radch administration?”
This is what had happened: Ime Station, and the smaller stations and moons in the system, were the farthest one could be from a provincial palace and still be in Radch space. For years the governor of Ime used this distance to her own advantage—embezzling, collecting bribes and protection fees, selling assignments. Thousands of citizens had been unjustly executed or (what was essentially the same thing) forced into service as ancillary bodies, even though the manufacture of ancillaries was no longer legal. The governor controlled all communications and travel permits, and normally a station AI would report such activity to the authorities, but Ime Station had been somehow prevented from doing so, and the corruption grew, and spread unchecked.
Until a ship entered the system, came out of gate space only a few hundred kilometers from the patrol ship Mercy of Sarrse. The strange ship didn’t answer demands that it identify itself. When Mercy of Sarrse’s crew attacked and boarded it, they found dozens of humans, as well as the alien Rrrrrr. The captain of Mercy of Sarrse ordered her soldiers to take captive any humans that seemed suitable for use as ancillaries, and kill the rest, along with all the aliens. The ship would be turned over to the system governor.
Mercy of Sarrse was not the only human-crewed warship in that system. Until that moment human soldiers stationed there had been kept in line by a program of bribes, flattery, and, when those failed, threats and even executions. All very effective, until the moment the soldier Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One decided she wasn’t willing to kill those people, or the Rrrrrr. And convinced the rest of her unit to follow her.
That had all happened five years before. The results of it were still playing themselves out.
Lieutenant Awn shifted on her cushion. “That business was all uncovered because a single human soldier refused an order. And led a mutiny. If it hadn’t been for her… well. Ancillaries won’t do that. They can’t.”
“That business was all uncovered,” replied the head priest, “because the ship that human soldier boarded, she and the rest of her unit, had aliens on it. Radchaai have few qualms about killing humans, especially noncitizen humans, but you’re very cautious about starting wars with aliens.”
Only because wars with aliens might run up against the terms of the treaty with the alien Presger. Violating that agreement would have extremely serious consequences. And even so, plenty of high-ranking Radchaai disagreed on that topic. I saw Lieutenant Awn’s desire to argue the point. Instead she said, “The governor of Ime was not cautious about it. And would have started that war, if not for this one person.”
“Have they executed that person yet?” the head priest asked, pointedly. It was the summary fate of any soldier who refused an order, let alone mutinied.
“Last I heard,” said Lieutenant Awn, breath tight and turning shallow, “the Rrrrrr had agreed to turn her over to Radch authorities.” She swallowed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Of course, it had probably already happened, whatever it was. News could take a year or more to reach Shis’urna from as far away as Ime.
The head priest didn’t answer for a moment. She poured more tea, and spooned fish paste into a small bowl. “Does my continued request for your presence present any sort of disadvantage for you?”
“No,” said Lieutenant Awn. “Actually, the other Esk lieutenants are a bit envious. There’s no chance for action on Justice of Toren.” She picked up her own cup, outwardly calm, inwardly angry. Disturbed. Talking about the news from Ime had increased her unease. “Action means commendations, and possibly promotions.” And this was the last annexation. The last chance for an officer to enrich her house through connections to new citizens, or even through outright appropriation.
“Yet another reason I would prefer you,” said the head priest.
I followed Lieutenant Awn home. And watched inside the temple, and overlooked the people crisscrossing the plaza as they always did, avoiding the children playing kau in the center of the plaza, kicking the ball back and forth, shouting and laughing. On the edge of the Fore-Temple water, a teenager from the upper city sat sullen and listless watching half a dozen little children hopping from stone to stone, singing: