Grail - Elizabeth Bear [50]
The whole made her brain itch as if it were stretching.
She saw its effectiveness in action, however, though she never saw combat herself. However girded for war he went, Tristen stayed well back from the action, trusting his troops to interpret their orders and handle their parts of the fight without undue interference. He and Jordan set up a command center in a ruined garden, nothing now but frozen soil open to space and the shattered stems of flowers, ice crystals grown about them in sparkling, angry collars and halos of spikes from within. Jordan watched on her helmet feeds as the opposing group—larger by three or four than the Engineers—pushed through defense after defense, accelerating and gaining confidence, until they suddenly found themselves bottlenecked, sniped upon, surrounded, and disarmed. Jordan held her breath over the feed when the drones stood up over the attackers, looming at them from every direction, armed and armored Engineers among them. There was a long moment when she was sure the lightly armed and spacesuited attackers would stand on their superior numbers and fight to the miserable, inevitable end.
But then Tristen gave a soft command into his armor pickups, and around the circle fifteen men and women died. The drones and toolkits massed their fire on selected targets, and those targets jerked and geysered blood and fell.
Jordan jerked much as the bodies had, shocked, but Tristen’s face showed nothing when she glanced over. Expressionless, and so he remained as the leaders of the insurrection—or their chief field agents—laid down their weapons and put up their hands.
It had been quick and nearly bloodless—and from all Jordan could see, positively elegant. She could not understand why it was that Tristen sighed and frowned and had to straighten his shoulders and pull his head up so selfconsciously when he finally went down to take their surrender.
She could not understand why it was that she herself felt so cold at her heart, and why her hands shook inside the armor as she accompanied him into the anchore where they would meet the rebel leaders.
The enemy had brought war. Tristen had done what he had done to save as many lives as he could save.
It was an act of mercy. What about this should seem terrible?
She remembered that now, however, as he summoned her to his offices, and it filled her with fresh unease. He had never behaved to her with the least impropriety, and she had no hesitation in going because of any worries that he might enforce a sexual advantage. Besides, she suspected he had some quiet and unadvertised relationship with Mallory, though it had never seemed proper to investigate.
No, her discomfort was not on her own behalf.
But nor was it for any other reason easy to identify, until she considered that when Tristen summoned her, inevitably, a way of life seemed to come to an end.
That he waited for her standing by the small real window—not a screen—that pierced one bulkhead of his office was no reassurance. For a routine meeting, he would sit at ease, and ask her to sit as well. Now he turned, his hair drifting like frost-feathers in the wind of his movement, and forced a smile. “Jordan.”
“You wanted me, First Mate?”
The silence dragged.
When she widened her eyes to meet his gaze, he let his shoulders settle and said, “You are Chief Engineer of the world now. By order of the Captain—”
“But—” she interrupted, or would have interrupted if he had not silenced her with an upraised palm.
“Benedick Conn recommended you,” he said. “And I seconded it. Do you argue with his judgment, or mine?”
“Chief Engineer,” she said, tasting it. Then she shook her head and smiled ruefully. “For the next thirty days.”
“The last Engineer