Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Emily Tesh’s debut novel, Some Desperate Glory. A queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory arrives April 11th from Tordotcom Publishing. Read chapter two below, or head back to the beginning.
While we live, the enemy shall fear us.
Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.
They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.
Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.
CHAPTER TWO
SPARROW
Kyr was so used to living by the rhythm of Gaea Station’s eight-hour shifts that she was never late for anything. Ten minutes before the shift bells she had already swung herself down from the hidden treetops of Agricole. Mags refused to move. “I’ll go when the bell goes,” he said. “Rec rotation’s a full shift. Five-minute rule.”
Five minutes was how long you had between rotation change and a black mark. Kyr had received exactly two black marks in her life, both when she was seven, her first year out of Nursery: the best record in her mess. Mags’s record was nearly as good despite his cavalier attitude. Kyr knew he and some of the other boys in Coyote mess had an ongoing competition to see how close they could get to four minutes fifty-nine exactly at rotation change. It was hardest going from Suntracker to Drill, but you could do it by cutting through the station core with a grapple.
Kyr could do it in four fifty-five.
Not that she would. She’d just wanted to prove to herself that she was as fast as any of the Coyotes.
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Kyr’s mess, Sparrow, had had Drill before rec, so they’d be eating and then into an Oikos quarter-shift before lights-out. Kyr jogged through the rock tunnels around Agricole and dropped down two levels past Drill in order to reach the plasteel-tiled corridors of the Oikos level at the bottom of the station. This rotation was normally dull—repairs, cleaning, sewing. When Kyr arrived at the kitchens the mess before her was just going off duty: they were Blackbird, a gaggle of twelve-year-old girls who were giggling and splashing each other with water from their mop bucket. Kyr could see that they hadn’t finished cleaning. The black dust of the planetoid that got everywhere on Gaea, even tiled areas like this, was drawn in soggy lines across the floor. Kyr walked up to the juniors and folded her arms.
The giggling stopped.
“Tell me why we need water,” said Kyr. She was not angry, exactly. There was no point getting angry with idiots. She was annoyed, because cadets as old as the Blackbirds should know better. And she was enjoying, as she usually did, being in the right.
Silence.
“You,” Kyr said, picking out the small one who’d been giggling loudest. “Tell me.”
“Um, to drink, Valkyr,” said the girl. Kyr felt a sting of gratification that the girl knew her name. “And to wash, and to cook, and to clean.”
“To live,” Kyr said. She raised her eyebrows. The people of Gaea should know their duty. It was Kyr’s duty—and her pleasure—to make sure that juniors like these behaved themselves.
“To live,” the Blackbirds echoed in ragged chorus.
“So why were you playing with it?” Kyr said. She pointed at a damp patch underfoot. The precious wetness was already seeping away between the tiles. Whoever had worked on these kitchens had done their best, probably, with materials never meant to build a space station; there were wide gaps between the tiles, grout flaking, bare black rock underneath. “Drink that.”
“It’s got soap in—”
“Drink it.”
The girl looked at her mess for support, but they all drew away. Then she looked up at Kyr pathetically, wet-eyed. Kyr frowned. Few things annoyed her more than someone trying to play on other people’s feelings. Feelings were not important; using them to manipulate your way out of a deserved dressing-down was shameful. “Do you think crying would save you from the majo?” she said. “I’m waiting.”
The Blackbird’s tears spilled over, but she had the sense not to wail. She got down on her knees and licked the damp patch of tiles. It was mostly damp black dust now. She looked up at Kyr with a black smear across her chin. Kyr could see her trying not to grimace at the taste.
Kyr waited grimly.
The Blackbird bent and licked the floor again.
“Is it good to drink?” Kyr said.
“No, Valkyr,” said the girl. The black smear was over half her face now.
“Is it going to rain here tomorrow?” “No, Valkyr.”
Kyr said, “Take a black mark.” Seniors had the right to hand them out to younger messes. “And finish putting all this away.”
The shift bells rang as she was speaking. Blackbird all looked at each other. They had five minutes. Kyr watched them without pity. If they were smart, they would leave one person to clean up for all of them; that way their mess would get fewer punctuality black marks. The person who was really late would work a punishment shift instead of their next rec rotation, but their mess wouldn’t suffer. And next time they’d all know not to waste water doing something as stupid as playing.
“Go on,” said the little one Kyr had forced to lick the dust. She was still in tears, but her voice was steady. Kyr respected her for it. “I’ll do it.”
The rest of Blackbird scattered and fled past the tall figures of Sparrow, who were coming in as the last shift bells died away. Lisabel—the only one of Kyr’s messmates who would pity idiot juniors—gave the remaining one a sympathetic look. Kyr pretended not to see it, because she was very fond of Lisabel.
There were seven of them in Sparrow: Cleo and Jeanne, Zenobia and Victoria and Artemisia, Lisabel—whose proper name was Isabella, after a warrior queen from history—and Kyr. They were the only girls’ mess in their age cohort. There were Coyote and Cat for the boys. Sparrow’s scores were better than Cat’s, largely because of Kyr. Kyr was proud of that. There was no beating Coyote, who were all warbreeds. Only Kyr and Jeanne and Cleo came from warbreed bloodlines in Sparrow. Cleo despite being undersized was a mean, focused, aggressive fighter. Jeanne was six foot one, red-haired and freckled, lean and deadly, utterly and unflappably calm. In the last two months she had moved up to running occasional Level Twelve scenarios along with Kyr, who had been working on them for nearly a year.
The three of them, Kyr thought, were near-certainties for combat wing assignments, despite being girls. Of the other Sparrows— she had worked hard with them, pushing them to their limits, making them the best they could be. They were better than any other girls’ mess. She thought that Arti—not a warbreed, but tough and hardworking and surprisingly broad-shouldered for a baseline human woman—had a decent chance of making combat too.
Cleo’s worrying about assignments made no sense to Kyr. Command had their training scores, their aptitudes, their ten years as cadets. Command knew what they were worth. Vic was small and jumpy, but she was clever; she and her great obsession with solar sails belonged in Suntracker. Lisabel—who was beautiful, with blue eyes and lustrous dark hair, and who was also enormously softhearted—should go to Nursery. And Zenobia with her sharp features and bland expression and placid practicality was meant for Oikos. It was all obvious.
And they were all of them Kyr’s.
“Where’s Jeanne?” she said, when they’d finished cooking together and sat down to eat. The five-minute grace period was long past.
The others exchanged looks.
“She got assigned,” said Cleo at last. “Halfway through rec.” She seemed to have forgotten their weird little confrontation outside the agoge. Her eyes were focused on Kyr’s face, very intent, as if she was looking for something, or perhaps trying to tell her something. Kyr wished she wouldn’t be so weird.
And then she registered what had actually been said. “Really?” she asked. Suddenly Commander Jole in the agoge telling her he was proud felt like it had another meaning. He would have just come from the Command meeting. Ten years of training for this. All Kyr wanted from her life was the chance to serve humanity. “What wing?”
“Ferox,” said Cleo, in that same intent way. The other Sparrows were silent.
Kyr said, “Yes.” She couldn’t control her grin. The combat wings were where you got respect and luxury allowances and the chance to advance in rank. It was a fantastic assignment, worthy of Jeanne’s training scores. It was a good sign for Cleo, too. And for Kyr herself, but Kyr had never had any doubts about herself. She jumped to her feet, abandoning her half-eaten potato stew, and went back into the kitchen to take down a canister of clear triple-brewed spirits from a top shelf. She scooped up some battered tin cups between her fingers. “Lisabel!” she called.
Lisabel came and took the cups so Kyr could manage the canister. Kyr poured everyone a measure of the liquor and then dropped back into her seat, still smiling uncontrollably. She’d spent the whole year they were thirteen running Jeanne through the hand-to-hand sections of the Level Five agoge final over and over again, forcing her to do it properly, to pick up the brightfire grenades, to grab the majo noncombatants and use them as shields. It had all been worth it.
“Fortune favors the bold!” she said, lifting her cup. It was the Ferox toast. Every wing had its own. The other Sparrows echoed her, and Arti and Vic touched their cups together before they knocked back their gulps of mouth-burning vodka. Kyr pretended not to notice; they seemed to think Kyr didn’t know they were kissing in secret. Kyr actually just knew it didn’t matter. Genetic variety threw up dead ends, everyone knew that, and what counted was that you did your duty.
Kyr grinned at them too. “Maybe you’ll be next,” she said. “What do you want, Arti? Ferox as well?”
There was a pause. Finally: “Scythica,” said Arti. “I like the little horsey badge.”
Vic nudged her, affectionate. “I want Suntracker,” she said. “I’m sure the topside array could be reangled. If I’m assigned there then they’ll have to listen to me.”
Cleo said, “Amazing, Victoria, we had no idea. Tell us more.” But she was smiling, no longer flat and intent now that she’d been distracted from whatever that was all about. Cleo in a good mood loved to tease. It was a while, actually, since Kyr had seen her in anything approaching a good mood. She was surprised by what a relief it was, being able to relax and leave Cleo to dominate the conversation without fear of getting snapped at over nothing. Kyr herself was not chatty at mealtimes. Instead she shoveled down mouthfuls of lumpy potato stew as the others talked. It wasn’t the best food—cadets didn’t get the best food—but Kyr’s warbreed body, which had run Doomsday four times that day, was greedy for fuel.
The Sparrows, warmed by the toast, were debating assignments. The best were the four combat wings: Ferox, Scythica, Augusta, Victrix. They got the smart navy uniform out of the old Terran Expeditionary stores; they got the best quarters, and first pick of off-station supplies, and luxury allowances to reward them for the dangers they faced. Without them the station would not survive. The majo hated that there were still humans in the universe they didn’t control. The combat wings engaged enemy incursions, chased off spies, and corrected the majo long-haul traders brazen enough to cut across Gaean territory as if human sovereignty was beneath their notice. Only the cadets with the best Drill and agoge scores made the cut for combat. And of course that meant more from the boys’ messes than the girls’.
Next after the four combat wings came the ones that kept the station alive: Systems, Suntracker, Agricole. They were vital in their own way. Kyr had done her shifts willingly, though she’d never understood Vic’s Suntracker obsession; it seemed strange to her to care that much about solar arrays. But that was why Vic would make a good Suntracker and Kyr wouldn’t. Then the last two official wings were Nursery and Oikos: both necessary. Without Oikos, none of the dull work of maintenance and repair and shift organization would get done. Without the women of Nursery Wing, humanity had no future.
At least two of the Sparrows would have to be assigned to Nursery to hit the population targets. Kyr had worked it out at some point. Lisabel was obvious, but it was hard to say the other. Maybe Zen, instead of Oikos. Maybe Arti: humanity would lose a soldier now but gain every child she bore them in the future.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Kyr said, when the conversation had gone from excited to circular. “Command knows best.”
“Oh, of course, how stupid of us. What about you, Kyr?” said Cleo. “Straight to Command?”
Kyr frowned. Command Wing wasn’t an official assignment. You had to be the best of the best. Kyr wouldn’t be ready for years. “Don’t be ridiculous. Not yet. Scythica or Victrix.”
Cleo’s flat look was back. What now? “Not yet, right. How humble you are. An example to us all.”
The words were teasing, but the tone was off. Kyr said, “Cleo, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Cleo repeated.
Kyr genuinely couldn’t think of anything. “Did you get some rec time in?”
There was a pause. Kyr became aware of the rest of the Sparrows looking silently between them: four pairs of eyes, because Jeanne was missing. Lisabel’s worried expression. Vic looking guilty because she’d somehow started this, and Arti shifting to take her hand under the table. Zen expressionless—Zen never seemed to react much to anything.
A thread of the conversation had slipped out of Kyr’s grasp somewhere. She couldn’t understand it.
“Rec time,” Cleo said at last, with enormous scorn. “Sure. I went and did a volunteer Nursery shift. Taught a dozen brats their times tables and gave a blow job to every admiral in quick succession. I felt so uplifted!”
“Cleo,” said Lisabel.
Cleo stood up. “We’ve got a quarter-shift to get to,” she said, “unless we want to sit around toasting Jeanne until we all get kicked off the station for having too much fun. Or does our fearless leader have a better idea?”
“I’m not your leader, Cleo,” Kyr said. “I’m your messmate.”
“Oh, right, my mistake,” Cleo said. “How could I forget you’re one of us?”
“Jeanne made Ferox,” Lisabel said quietly. She had her hand on Cleo’s wrist. “You’ll be combat too. Don’t be scared.”
Cleo drew in a deep breath, and then sighed and shook Lisabel off. “Well. Command knows best. I don’t care really.”
“You don’t?” said Kyr.
“Sure,” Cleo said. “Anything but Strike. I just want to live.”
“There’s no such thing as Strike,” said Kyr. Strike was enemy propaganda: as if Gaea had nothing better to do with its precious people than send them out to die in showy bombings and assassinations. The humans elsewhere who sacrificed themselves were worthy of respect: they were Earth’s children, even if they lived among collaborators. But Strike Wing wasn’t an assignment, because it wasn’t real.
Cleo laughed a hard little laugh and said, “Where’s the lecture? Sweet and meet, right? Shouldn’t I be longing to die for a dead world?”
It is sweet and meet to die for your fatherland: old Earth poetry, which they’d all learned by heart in Nursery. “It’s all right to be afraid,” said Kyr.
“Are you afraid?”
Kyr didn’t answer. She wasn’t. She hadn’t realized Cleo was. “There are different ways to serve,” she said at last. “As long as you serve. That’s all that matters.”
“You should be Strike,” Cleo said. “Go blow yourself up to teach the majo a lesson. You’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“Thank you,” said Kyr. “But there’s no such thing.”
They had their Oikos quarter-shift to get to. They washed up quickly. Kyr noticed out of the corner of her eye Lisabel taking a moment to wipe down a spot the little Blackbird had missed earlier.
Well, as long as the work got done.
A runner from Tiger, the youngest boys’ mess, dashed in just as they were putting away the plates. He hopped from one foot to the other in nervous impatience until Kyr turned to acknowledge him and then said, “Sergeant Harriman requests Sparrow in Victrix Hangar, please!”
Sergeant was a courtesy rank for the chief of Oikos. “We’ll be right there,” said Kyr. “Dismissed.”
Harriman, a big bald old soldier with a fringe of greying hair and the glint of long-ago visual enhancement visible in his eyes, was waiting when they jogged up to the giant metal doors that opened into the Victrix hangar. “There you are,” he said. He passed Kyr a keycard and a clipboard with a blank storage log on it. “Storeroom sixteen,” he said. “Strip, catalogue, and pack. Off you go, kids.”
Kyr saluted. “Sergeant.”
The other Sparrows were nudging each other and whispering. Strip, catalogue, and pack was the order for captured enemy spacecraft. A Victrix patrol had run into a majo incursion and won a victory. What would it be? A fat stupid merchant ship carrying luxuries was the most likely, but two years ago Scythica had brought in a real fightercraft still whining to itself about the orders of the Wisdom, a sleek murderous machine that Kyr had glimpsed only once before Systems took it apart.
“—or chocolate,” she heard Vic whisper to Arti, and rolled her eyes a little.
They ducked into the hangar through the service hatch. There was a squadron of Victrix on guard: Kyr saluted again, and they nodded slightly and waved the Sparrows through. One of them was smoking a cigarette. He took it away from his lips to smile at them—no, at Lisabel specifically. She was too small to be useful in combat, but she was pretty. The tobacco was a luxury, so these men had probably been in the engagement and survived. No wonder they were cheerful.
The Victrix hangar, one of four, was a long cavern that dove deep into Gaea Station’s native planetoid. Down below them, at the base of a long spiraling stone ramp, lay the massive metal hulk of a dead ship. The Victrix had once carried thousands through the void to conquer strange worlds. Chunks of her hull were gone, repurposed to build the station. What was left was buckled and distorted under the lash of gravity weapons. The dreadnought’s complement of light nukes and Isaac slugs now formed the basis of the main defensive battery just outside the hangar’s atmospheric seal. Fightercraft in lovingly polished cradles filled most of the hangar. They were one-or two-man machines, short-range, state of the art before Kyr was born: they’d once filled the belly of the ravaged dreadnought.
Near the top of the hangar was something alien.
Kyr felt the rest of Sparrow slowing to a halt around her.
The captured majo ship wasn’t a merchantman, though they’d had to use one of their tiny handful of big merchant cradles to hold it. It had the sleek dangerous lines of a fightercraft, but it was more than twice the size. The Victrix guards keeping watch were dwarfed beside it. Kyr narrowed her eyes as she took it in. She had never seen anything so mad-looking: the entire hull was painted in extravagant, wasteful swirls of bright color, reds and blues and golds.
Handcuffed to the struts of the cradle under the alien ship was a majo. Both its hands were cuffed above its head. Kyr did not recognize the species. She had never seen anything like it in the agoge. Its crest, made of fine white flukes, was flat to its skull in what looked like a fear gesture. Its too-large eyes were a very pale silver color. Kyr stared at it.
The Victrix soldiers were both trying to guard it without looking at it. Kyr couldn’t blame them. “Why is that thing still alive?” she demanded.
The majo lifted its head, and its crest came up a little. In clear if oddly accented T-standard, it said, “Because if you kill me my very nice ship will explode before whatever passes for a scientist in this tragic place can learn anything useful from it.”
“Shut up,” said a guard, and backhanded the thing across the side of its face.
“Please remember that I am not nearly as durable as a human,” said the majo after breathing hard for a second. A purple bruise was blooming around its left eye like a gigantic flower.
“Shut up!”
“Gag it,” said Kyr practically.
The Victrix guard scowled, presumably wishing he’d thought of that first. Kyr nodded to Lisabel, who donated her belt. The majo did not resist having its mouth stuffed full. It let the guard manhandle it like a doll. Kyr tore her eyes away when the thing was properly silenced. It felt like trying to ignore a live grenade, but she refused to be afraid.
“We’re here to strip and pack the ship,” she told the Victrix guards, and showed them the clipboard.
“Mnf,” said the majo. It wiggled the hands cuffed to the cradle struts, like a child trying to get attention in a Nursery lesson. It had three long thin fingers and a short thumb. When they all ignored it—Kyr with determined insouciance, the guards sullenly, the other Sparrows nervous—it said “Mnf ” again, more urgently.
“What if it matters?” said Lisabel.
Kyr rolled her eyes. She went to the painted ship’s hatch and reached for the handle.
There was a flash of green light, a moment of screaming heat and terrible cold, and Kyr was suddenly on the floor ten feet away. One of the guards sniggered. Kyr jumped up, coldly furious. Who put dimensional trapping on a civilian vessel?
The majo finished spitting out its mouthful of Lisabel’s belt. “I was going to say,” it said mildly, “the keys are in my pocket.”
The ship’s inside was as ridiculous as its outside. There was nothing useful, just a stupid jumble: fancy glassware in the cupboards, ornamental carvings in alien biomatter stuck on the walls, a whole compartment that turned out to be a wardrobe, practically overflowing. Some of the clothes were made from rare fabrics. Kyr, tossing garments over her shoulder one after another, stopped when she felt the familiar-strange texture of wool. Ursa had once had a wool scarf. She’d said it was their mother’s. This wool was a white robe thing with something silvery knitted into it. It had a tag inside. Kyr puzzled out the Majodai. Made on Chrysothemis from Genuine Terran Biomatter! and then All Sales Go to the Home for Humanity Refugee Resettlement Fund.
Kyr knotted the thing up into a white and silver ball and tossed it out into the hangar as hard as she could. Disgusting.
The clothing all went under “luxury fabrics” in their log. They sorted it into boxes in front of the handcuffed majo. They hadn’t gagged it again, but it seemed to have enough sense not to chatter. It watched its clothes being ripped up along the seams without much reaction. Kyr couldn’t read its expressions very well but she thought it was resigned. That made her angry. She’d wanted it to be hurt.
She faked a stumble and gave it a kick in the side as she hauled herself back up the cradle into the ship. The guards ignored it. One of them grinned a little, but in the other direction.
Half an hour in they were interrupted by another runner from Tiger. “Sparrow!” he gulped, and saluted. He held out a flimsy in Kyr’s direction. The others paused what they were doing. Cleo was halfway through hoisting a box of glassware onto her hip. “Wing assignment!” said the runner. Kyr took the flimsy, glanced at the name scribbled on the outside, and passed it to Lisabel.
They all watched her unfold it and read it, even though they knew what it said. Even the Victrix guards were paying attention. Wing assignments didn’t happen every day.
Lisabel read it, folded it up again, and lifted her head to smile at them all. “Nursery.”
“Congratulations,” said Zen, after a moment when no one said anything.
Kyr turned to the nearest guard and said, “Soldier, your flask?”
He passed it over. Cleo had caught the idea and was unpacking the top row of glasses from the storage box. They’d toasted Jeanne. Kyr glanced up from pouring out vodka when she felt eyes on her. It was Vic who was staring. “You can’t live by the rules all the time,” said Kyr. “Mess is mess.”
Vic paused, and then said, “Mess is mess,” and smiled at Kyr, a little uncertain, almost surprised. Arti silently came up and slung an arm around her waist—silly of her, thought Kyr, but she wasn’t going to say anything. She just handed them their vodka, and Arti and Vic clinked the glasses together. Zen snorted a little when she got her glass, and took a preliminary sip and made a face. Cleo was smirking, her sharp smile like the edge of a knife, her posture ramrod perfect as ever. She took her glass and lifted it to Kyr, a wordless half toast, as if the two of them had been carrying on a conversation the whole time since they’d clashed outside the agoge, and Kyr had now somehow settled it.
Kyr turned to Lisabel last, and caught hold of her hand and clasped it in both of hers as she passed the glass over. Lisabel’s eyes were deep blue; the glass sparkled between her hands. Kyr paused for an instant longer.
She became aware of the majo looking at them. The majo probably thought that they lived lives of dreary misery on Gaea Station. It had its shipful of luxuries, its easy life, its precious fabrics made from the plundered remains of Earth’s biological glories. But it did not have, and could never have, the things Kyr had: her mess and her cause.
It nodded at the glass—crystal clear, embellished with traceries of silver—and said, “Those are very valuable, you know.”
Kyr let go of Lisabel’s hands. She stepped away one pace, and picked up the last glass, her own. She held it up to Lisabel and said, “I would rather stand three times in the battle line than give birth to one child.”
It was the Nursery toast: another line of ancient Earth poetry, an acknowledgment that what Nursery had to do was also an act of courage. Lisabel watched Kyr’s face for a silent moment. Finally she smiled, just a quirk of her lips. “Thank you,” she said.
“Three times,” said Cleo abruptly, lifting her glass.
“Three times,” echoed Vic, and then they all said it, all except Jeanne, who should have been there too. Even after assignment, your mess was your mess.
“Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to visit you soon,” said the guard who’d shared his flask. Lisabel turned pink and looked away. Kyr grinned. She gave him his flask back, and paused for a moment, looking at the majo.
“Very valuable, you said?”
It blinked large silvery eyes. “That’s right. Also of some sentimental value, if you care.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” said Kyr.
She drained the last gulp of liquor, held up the little shining glass so it caught the light and its silver traceries sent strange shadow-patterns spiraling across the floor.
Then she tossed it into the air, caught it, and smashed it against the pleasure ship’s painted hull. “Cleo!”
Cleo let out a sharp crack of laughter and threw hers too. Then the others joined in, first Vic, then Arti, then Zen; little tinkling smashes one after the other as the tiny shiny glasses broke and shards of glass and silver went everywhere. Zen shouted something Kyr didn’t catch as she threw hers, and for a moment her usually placid expression was alight. Only Lisabel was left holding a glass. Kyr said, “Don’t be shy!”
Lisabel threw the last glass against the floor, so hard that the shattered pieces went everywhere in a shining spray.
“That’s what we think of your very valuable,” said Kyr to the majo.
It didn’t say anything. Its pale crest was flat to its skull again. They’d frightened it.
Excerpted from Some Desperate Glory, copyright © 2022 by Emily Tesh.
