Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation by Jean Johnson

anything glittery, meioa-e.
    ~Ia
    AUGUST 22, 2498 T.S.
BEAUTIFUL-BLUE, SUGAI SYSTEM
    Her ear still hurt. Despite her self-healing abilities, Ia felt the curve of her right ear throbbing as the tissues slowly knitted themselves whole around the newest hole on that side of her head. Not nearly as badly as losing her eye had hurt, but it was an annoyance all the same.
    Of course, gaining the hole had been a singular honor. After gargling an antiseptic mouthwash, the Queen of the Solaricans herself had bitten the curve of Ia’s equally swabbed ear. She had needed to do so by Solarican custom, for only their queen could make the hole for the extra piercing that, linked by a special chain and post to the previous two, marked Ia as an official Royal Seer War Princess, and not merely a War Princess. It was a mouthful of a title, but it made Ia an equal in rank and command with Royal Sector War Prince K’sennshin. That was the meioa-o in charge of all the military forces for the Solarican colonies that were a part of the Alliance, and he had greeted her as an equal without equivocation the moment the chain-linked rings were in place.
    Knowing in advance it was coming and not wanting to be outdone, Myang had ordered a new uniform for Ia, issued by hyperrelayed order to the
Damnation
as soon as the ship came into the Sugai System. That decision had no doubt been spurred by the realization through diplomatic channels that the Solarican Queen was “appropriating” the Prophet of a Thousand Years to be part of her people’s military structure . . . whether or not the Terrans approved of it. That meant Ia wore formal Dress Blacks; she couldn’t escape them now that she was a four-star member of the Command Staff. But the cuff-buttoned sleeves and boot-length slacks now bore four stripes down each side, dull green, muddy brown, misty blue, and pewter gray, by the Admiral-General’s orders.
    The presence of all four colors implied that she was now firmly a part of all four Branches of the Space Force, and not just her own Cordon in the Space Force or her temporary placement over a single Division of the SF Army on Dabin. Even Admiral Genibes, her former superior, had only the blue stripe of the Navy and the gray stripe of the Special Forces decorating his Dress Blacks. But Myang had ordered Ia to consider the whole of the Space Force as under her purview, precognitively . . . though the canny woman had not yet given her the actual authority to
make
orders. Everything still had to be constructed as suggestions and sent to the appropriate Admirals and Generals for review.
    All things considered, though, it was an encouraging sign. At this rate, Ia would get the authority to make those suggestions as outright commands. Eventually, with a high probability . . . but not as a certainty. Nothing was certain. Her shoulder, her briefly lost eye, Hollick-turned-N’keth, Ginger-Meddled-Mattox, herself nearly ruining everything through an urge to give a flippant reply . . . nothing was one hundred percent pure, surefire certain in her life.
    Except maybe the boredom of speeches . . .
    They were still going through the florid introductory speeches and political-posturing stages, things which Ia considered a waste of precious time. But she had to be here for this meeting, so the slowly fading pain in her ear was a semi-welcome distraction. Almost every single ruler or leader of the current Alliance nations, both secular and military, had been gathered into this room. Or set of rooms, technically. Not the Salik nor the Choya, of course, since they were the enemy, but the Terran Humans, the V’Dan Humans, the Gatsugi, K’Katta, Tlassians, Solaricans—overall Queen and local War Prince—and the two species that required their own chambers to exist.
    The Chinsoiy leaders rested on tall, slanting, stool-like furnishings behind a thick-shielded window in a chamber designed to pulse the low-level radiations necessary for their