Tarona Rusk
Her Proper Business
In which Tarona Rusk has one more thing to do.
Tarona Rusk’s plot thread has now caught up with where she was at when she made her appearance two-thirds of the way through Accepting the Lance. Presumably when we next see her that appearance will be behind her and we’ll get to learn what, now that her debts have been paid, constitutes “the remainder of her plans”.
Tarona Rusk
Auxiliary Services
In which Section Head Tarona Rusk catches up on the news of her department.
More details about the consequences of the Healing of Tarona Rusk, and more things whose absence was felt in Accepting the Lance. It’s going to be interesting, at some point in the future, to re-read this stretch of the series with Trader’s Leap included in chronological order, and see how much that changes how I feel about Accepting the Lance.
Continue reading
Six of Us
Jenarian Station
In which Rys makes a gamble.
I suppose it was too much to hope that the official procedure for disbanding the Department merely meant calling the whole thing off and letting everyone go home.
Continue reading
In which three get with the program.
I mentioned the way the team had split up last time, but I only just now realised that it’s reflected in the chapter titles: they’re called “One”, “Two”, and “Three”, not just because they’re the first three chapters of the book, but also because that’s how many of the Six are in each chapter.
Continue reading
Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak
In which a team comes together.
I was wrong about why Val Con found Tocohl’s voice familiar, but at least I was inside the ball park.
It occurs to me that Val Con thinking about his plans for his daughter’s future actually fits in well in the midst of Rys and the free agents planning, because the potential for Talizea to have a future is one of the things they’re fighting for.
Whatever plan they decide on, there’s no chance now they’ll get it done before the end of the book, but that’s no surprise; The Decisive Attack on the Department was always the kind of thing that was going take a whole book to tell.
It’s interesting that the free agents apparently don’t know about Val Con. The Department knows, of course, but it makes sense that a particular agent wouldn’t have been told unless there was some reason they needed to know. After the attack on Solcintra Headquarters, it would have become general knowledge that Korval was acting in opposition to the Department, but perhaps not the details of how that came about.
I wonder if Claidyne, the former director, knows.
The Firmament
In which Claidyne ven’Orikle has already made a choice.
And here I was thinking that there weren’t any really interesting variations left.
Now Korval has not only a group of people with abilities and motives to go after the Department; with Claidyne’s knowledge and the plan that arose from it, they have something specific for them to attempt to achieve.
Helpfully, Claidyne’s target is not the same download point the current Commander of Agents used and built her headquarters around – that was the secondary download point, and this is the quaternary – so there will be no necessity to confront her directly. (The primary, of course, was lost when the Headquarters under Solcintra were destroyed. That leaves a tertiary unaccounted for, and perhaps a quinary, a senary, a septenary, …)
I’m not entirely clear on where this leaves Claidyne in the waking world. Her mind took extreme measures to keep her from being consciously aware of the plan, and if that remains the case then she can’t be counted on to willingly assist in it. We’re told Anthora has pinned the two halves of her together more securely, but I’m not clear whether that means a return to them acting and working together. We shall see.
(It occurs to me that what Claidyne achieved is something like what Daav achieved with Jen Sar, or Cantra with Maelyn, only more painfully and with considerable damage to self due to stressful circumstances and lacking the advantages of training or genetic aptitude.)
I’m interested in this talk about the Commander of Agents being downloaded. Claidyne speaks of information: knowledge about the Department’s holdings, its codes, its plans. But the novel has also spoken of another kind of download – the download of an AI into the physical platform it will be running on. I’ve already mentioned that when the current Commander received the download it reminded me of Theo forming a connection with the Bechimo AI. Suppose the information required to act as the Commander is packaged with a personality, a tried and proven Commander of Agents personality, that can pick up smoothly where the former instance of itself left off and will render irrelevant any plans the Commander-candidate may have had to use the position for a personal goal. It seems like the kind of thing the Department might do. (But what happens if the Commander gets downloaded into one half of a mind divided? That could get interesting…)
Runcible System
Daglyte Seam
In which the Department of the Interior has a new Commander.
Just in case it seemed like things were going too smoothly, we learn that the Department of the Interior still exists, still has a working command structure, and still has some nasty toys at its disposal.
In some ways the most upsetting thing about how badly the Department treats its people is the way they’ve all been trained not to notice.
This being a re-read, I’m reminded of something that happens some considerable while later in the series; I should probably to wait until then to talk about why, if I haven’t, as I did the first time through, forgotten about this by then.