“We would have demanded it then if it had occurred to us that any Hive would not make uniforms!” It was Director Lu Biaoji who snapped back fastest, Lu Yong’s replacement heading the stronger Shanghai bloc, and as stately as a king in their new military uniform, its rank marks sparkling on their shoulders like old gold. This new Lu was a cousin of the old, and this the only bloc where family had dug its roots so deep that not even the hurricane of public outrage could rip the reins of power free. “Thirty days is absolutely unacceptable. Our members are facing fresh attacks every hour, and you propose another month while these biased courts continue to give attackers free rein citing a military law that doesn’t even exist! I have Members in Sydney being held for attempted murder for fighting back against a mob who killed—not just hurt but killed—several of their bash’members, while the attackers walk free because the police say they were soldiers in a military action. Whose soldiers? What military action? There must be accountability!”
Ma Yimin took up the thread, Shanghai’s former Comptroller, who, after decades of loyal backburner grunt work, had been expelled from Wang Baobao’s bloc last year (some kerfuffle over a reclamation project), disgraced at the perfect moment to ride this new swing of the pendulum back to power. “We all agree Hives have the right to make different laws for different Members, but if they want to have different rules for soldiers and civilians, it needs to be as clear as Blacklaw and Whitelaw. Europe has it right. Members must register as military, laws must be consistent, and there must be uniforms—not in a month, tomorrow—so attackers and victims can both know they’ll be tried under a specific law, soldier or civilian, not whichever is most convenient for the faction in power.” I almost laughed at how perfectly Ma Yimin, whose half-Masonic birth bash’ might have made them a little different, still fell into place behind Lu Biaoji. I mulled over which old favors it was—Zhejiang Campus, Trifold Investments, Dubai—which had locked this new Shanghai pair into ‘lead’ and ‘follow’ so instantly that it felt as if their two predecessors had just put on different faces. But it stopped feeling funny fast. My stash of trivia—this clutter of Romanova insider gossip—would it become a weapon too now? Just as much as sticks and stones?
Patient Carmen Guildbreaker (the nickname still makes me giggle as well as smile) shook their head. “We will not win the others over if you set this impossible timeframe. Not because it will be difficult, but because it will be implausible. You want us to present this proposal as if it came from us, not you. I agree that’s a good idea, and will make people see that it benefits all sides, not just yours, but if I go to my Emperor and suggest uniforms and military law, and I say they have to be accepted in four hours and implemented in twenty-four, Caesar will ask the reason for my haste. Before such questions, I could not hide your involvement.”
It fell to grim old Chen Chengguo—Wang Laojing’s successor as the voice of Beijing—to voice what glared in all their eyes. “You said you could be neutral in this.”
“I can. I am fully authorized to lie to my Emperor, but I’m also bad at it. And even if I weren’t, this lie is too transparent. If you want the Triumvirate to present this as our plan, it has to look like one of our plans, with balance and a plausible degree of moderation. If this came from us, even if we were in haste, we would offer . . . two weeks? . . .” Carmen waited for Im-Jin and Su-Hyeon to nod in their respective screens. “. . . for the Hives to design military law codes from scratch, and a month for them to make and distribute uniforms.”
Beijing was not satisfied. “Are you claiming the Masons don’t already have military law? This sounds like buying time.”
“Not at all.” Still Carmen clung to a smile. “I’m certain the Empire has a robust body of military law, but it may not be sufficiently contemporary.”
“Contemporary? What do you mean?”
Speaker Jin Im-Jin’s dry laugh cut through from another side screen. “Carmen means their uniforms may predate pants.” They gave us a few breaths to savor that one, and since my feed was muted, I was free to chuckle. “Seriously, Directors, even Europe took some time redesigning the relics of the Church War. I’d bet good money we can get most everyone to agree to the concept in four hours, but the world isn’t going to be fully in uniform tomorrow.”
“Triumvirs.” Dominic’s black growl undid the spell of Jin’s humor. “Your four hours are becoming three. We will liberate the Mitsubishi of Sydney. When our fleet reaches the harbor, if we have the solid promise that all forces there will soon be uniformed, then we will wait, perhaps . . . forty-eight hours to enter the city, so our troops will be able to greet allies as allies and avoid the neighborhoods held by our enemies. If we have no such promise, we will have no choice but to enter right away, and fight our way through the streets until we reach our Members, treating every other person we encounter on the way as armed and dangerous.”
Su-Hyeon frowned. “Threats are—”
“Real,” Dominic barked back. “Argument will not widen the Pacific. Four hours. The Europeans, your own Romanovan forces, and Red Crystal have uniforms, and our troops have orders how to treat each. For the others, we do not require polished, final law codes that will never be revised, we require the ability to distinguish friend from foe from fleeing bystander.”
The repetition of ‘four hours’ made me feel strangely tired. It was all so absurdly ponderous, the fleet shown in a side screen in my lenses, crawling with invisible sloth across the monotonous Pacific. It seemed impossible that we could know, and watch, and have every force on Earth a call away, and yet we could no more catch up to these barely moving specks than I could chase the latest Mars launch on my bicycle.
Su-Hyeon brightened, and it was slightly surreal seeing them wiggle their arms on screen, and simultaneously feeling their elbow against my real live ribs. “Then you’d accept stopgap uniforms?”
“Stopgap?”
Su-Hyeon flashed something up in our lenses, and I recognized (to my embarrassment) my own drawings of my most recent uniform designs—no, worse, older drawings, a set Achilles had pronounced ‘barely less awful’ than my first, and even those improvements were mostly because I plagiarized Apollo. “If all you want is the ability to distinguish sides, then uniforms don’t have to be a suit of clothes.” Su-Hyeon zoomed in on a sleeve striped with Remaker Vs. “They just need to be insignia so you can tell what’s a pub crawl and what’s an invasion. Short-term, would you accept something quick to make? An armband, a sash, a stencil, something people can make or print at home? It’s not a bad thing that anyone can copy them, it’s good, the point is to be like a Hiveless sash. If people have insignia they’re under military law, and if not they’re noncombatant. All sides can worry about more elaborate things on their own time.”
Murmurs in Chinese sounded vaguely approving.
Focusing past the lens feed, I frowned into my—was this breakfast? It could never work. Quick-to-make or no, people facing invasion weren’t going to put on uniforms just so they could be targeted more easily. It was too prisoners’-dilemma. As groups we benefit if everyone’s in uniform, but each individual is safest out of uniform, since those in uniform will draw more fire. These objections were in Achilles’s voice in my head, my imagination aping the criticisms our veteran had lodged against my many sketches. My early drafts had made the same mistakes, too gaudy and distinctive, rank marks on shoulders or sleeves so easy for a rooftop rifle to pick out. The First World War had taught that lesson at the cost of umpteen thousand officers, then moved its rank marks to the subtle collar. These Mitsubishi designs would make them walking targets that same way. Or maybe that didn’t matter anymore. This wasn’t 1914, it was five centuries later, and what personal tracker didn’t now have a camera good enough to zoom in on a collar from a kilometer away? The Major was from another time, and maybe wrong, at least about modern psychology. Clothing today was so much about honesty and self-description. Millions were already wearing the bull’s-eye voluntarily, or the Vs, and getting beat up for it. Maybe in this era, when we’d all grown up showing our Hives and strats and hobbies on our sleeves, we’d pass the prisoners’ dilemma and all choose to wear the uniforms that would make the whole war better but each person’s chances worse. Except we Servicers, of course, our uniforms were camouflaged and subtle. Sensible. And then a new thought hit me, one which makes my gut feel sour as I remember it: Why should I care if the Mitsubishi have bad uniform designs? I’m not a Mitsubishi. How is it anything but good if opposing forces wear a bull’s-eye on their chests, some literally? So long as my side is protected, let the rest play dress-up. I felt sick, the half-chewed beans like warm mud in my mouth. I was betraying Su-Hyeon. Jin and Carmen too, who were so genuinely neutral, serving the common good with the raw faith that it was good for their Hives too. And I was betraying Vivien, sullying the honorable title of Anonymous with my partisanship. How had Mycroft managed to balance all this? Tangled in so many sides at once?