Revenant Gun

by Yoon Ha Lee

  Another memory-flash, again of the woman and the robots. This time the woman was bent over—paperwork? The robots were blinking their lights at each other, presumably holding a conversation, even if he couldn’t understand the code. He felt an overwhelming rush of friendliness toward the robots—servitors—even though he didn’t know why. It had something to do with the woman, though. Something to investigate later.

  “You’re not eating,” Kujen said with a note of distress at odds with Jedao’s impression of him as someone who viewed people in utilitarian terms. “And the major won’t eat unless you do. You know how Kel are.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jedao said, opening his eyes, and picked up his chopsticks. The thought of eating repulsed him. Everything he tried had an odd metallic aftertaste. Neither Kujen nor Dhanneth gave any sign that anything was amiss, however. At least the tea was tolerable.

  “I woke you early because I figured something like this would happen,” Kujen said briskly. “You can thank me for my foresight later.”

  “I defer to your judgment,” Jedao said.

  Kujen blinked at Jedao’s sudden formality. “It would have been impossible to catch you up on everything at once. You do see that? But it’s as well you have your composure back. Kel get panicky when their commanding officers lose it. How much do you remember about formation instinct?”

  “Formation instinct?”

  Kujen dithered over two pastries, which looked identical to Jedao, then selected the one closer to him. “It’s a Kel’s emotional need to maintain hierarchy. You’ll find it useful.”

  Jedao saw Dhanneth stiffen out of the corner of his eye. He was going to have to look into that, too, part of a whole list of mysteries. Still, this explained what Kujen had meant when he said he could guarantee the swarm’s loyalty. And it might explain the mixed signals he was getting from Dhanneth, half solicitousness, half resentment. “When did Kel Command institute it? And how?”

  The bigger question was, why would the average Kel go along with what sounded like mass brainwashing? One more thing he didn’t remember.

  Dhanneth was resolutely cutting up a stuffed pancake. Even through the gloves Jedao could see that he had a death-grip on his chopsticks. For a moment, Jedao thought that Dhanneth was going to answer for Kujen. Then Dhanneth took a large bite and chewed determinedly.

  “It happened some time after your death,” Kujen said. He set the half-eaten pastry down and leaned back. “Your breakdown was a major inspiration, even though none of the Kel were culpable. Formation instinct is injected through psych surgery, and even then it’s not an entirely reliable procedure. The Kel do their best to recruit individuals suitable for the injection, and it works well enough for their purposes. Needless to say, your average Shuos isn’t remotely suitable.”

  Kujen waited for a reaction. Jedao choked back his impulse to say, That doesn’t sound remotely ethical and instead smiled blandly at him. “Useful to know, thank you.” He forced himself to eat an apple slice. “When do I meet my officers?”

  “Tomorrow,” Kujen said.

  At the top of the chain would be Jedao’s tactical group commanders—currently four of them—and two infantry colonels, as well as the heads of his staff departments. There would also be a great mass of bannermoth and boxmoth commanders. He’d only had time to review the profiles of the commanders last night. Too bad he hadn’t known in advance that Kujen would be presenting him with Dhanneth, or he could have looked him up too.

  While Jedao would be able to confer with the officers at any point during the campaign, it wouldn’t be the same as meeting them in person. There it came again, that flash of expertise he didn’t recall acquiring. He desperately wanted to flee to a game café and talk out the whole situation with Ruo or one of his other friends, someone he trusted. Too bad he didn’t have that option.

  Jedao inclined his head toward Dhanneth when the latter had finished swallowing his current bite of pancake. “I read the profiles, but I want you to tell me about Commander Kel Talaw.” Talaw was in charge of the command moth, and therefore, of Tactical Group One. They were also an alt, which a notation had informed him was a rarity among the Kel. Jedao couldn’t see why, but perhaps the Kel had gained some prejudices in the last four centuries. Nevertheless, Talaw had an exemplary record. Jedao was curious how the Kel under their command felt about them.

  Dhanneth’s mouth crimped. “Commander Talaw still holds the command moth, sir?” He glanced quickly toward Kujen, who paid him no heed, then lowered his eyes.

  “What’s their reputation?”

  “Strict,” Dhanneth said immediately. “Honorable. You are lucky to have them.”

  Interesting. “You’ve served under them?”

  Long hesitation. “No. But I am—confident of their reputation.”

  Kujen was mixing three different kinds of fruit preserves on a toast point, like a bored child. He looked up and said, “What the major is trying not to express too crudely is that the commander was quite loyal to the swarm’s original general. Luckily, I was able to talk sense into Talaw before they made some typically Kel suicidal gesture.”

  Jedao confined himself to a nod, wondering if he was ever going to find out what had happened to the original general. “What about Commander Nihara Keru?” She led Tactical Two. With his luck, she was also a time bomb.

  “You may have an ally in her,” Dhanneth said.

  That couldn’t be a good sign. “How so?”

  “Commander Nihara is a believer in results,” Dhanneth said. “Whatever else people say about you, no one questions your ability to get results.”

  Only his sanity. “I’ll try not to disappoint her,” Jedao said. He asked as well about the commanders of Tactical Three and Tactical Four.

  “Neither Commander Vai nor Commander Miroi has shown any sign of disloyalty to the hexarch,” Dhanneth said.

  “This is a crass question,” Jedao said, “but how does formation instinct interact with the whole tangle? The hexarch mentioned that his adversaries were led by ‘upstart Kel.’ How does that even happen?”

  “Proximity,” Kujen said. “The military code failed to account for what people should do if all of Kel Command combusted. I scooped up this swarm on the strength of my position, even though I’m not a Kel.”

  Really? Jedao thought. There had to be more to the story. Why would a Kel swarm submit to a Nirai, even a hexarch?

  Kujen was still speaking. “Kel Inesser already had the loyalty of most Kel and invented a new title for herself. She must have thought that declaring herself hexarch was too much. High General Brezan should have succeeded to hexarch on a technicality, but he too refused to claim the position since he attained his rank by an irregular route. This left a lot of Kel to make an awkward decision.”

  “Who knocked out Kel Command, then?” Jedao asked. “That was notably not in your briefing materials.”

  “That’s because I don’t know,” Kujen said, grim for the first time. “I have agents on the problem, but not much hard evidence.”

  “Why wasn’t Kel Command dispersed?” Jedao said. “You’d think they’d have stashed away a spare high general—a real one, if this Brezan didn’t suit—on the other side of the hexarchate in case something like this happened.”

  “Composite technology,” Kujen said. “They were too dependent on the hivemind to survive without it. I told them it was a bad idea, but... well, it’s done now. You can look up the details in the grid some other time. You’ve got an augment now, no reason not to, so you can query it that way too if you’d rather. We’re not using composite tech—bad idea, as I said—but the enemy might be, because stars forbid the Kel ever give up a tradition.”

  Kujen folded up his napkin into a moth-shape and grinned at Jedao’s look of distaste. Shape-folding was a distinctly Vidona art, and he was surprised that Kujen knew how to do it. “You and the major might as well go to it,” Kujen said. “I have some matters to go over with my assistant. There are some drinks and snacks
in the fridge. I picked out a good fridge for you. If you need something more nourishing, call up a menu and make an order.”

  A good fridge? Jedao wondered. Why, was there a hierarchy of refrigerators? Then again, a Nirai might have some atavistic fondness for appliances.

  Kujen added, “The servitors will clear the dishes, Jedao. You needn’t worry about chores as if you still lived on a farm. I’ll fetch you when it comes time to address the Kel.”

  Jedao tried to bring up memories of this farm, but everything was hazy. He watched Kujen make his way unhurriedly out of the room.

  Once Kujen was gone, Jedao turned to Dhanneth. “I assume we’re being monitored because that’s how I’d do it”—Dhanneth didn’t disagree—“but there are things I need to know. Will you answer my questions?”

  He hated putting Dhanneth on the spot like this. But Kujen had put a swarm into his care. He had to do right by them, to say nothing of the people on whose behalf he was fighting.

  “I have no choice but to answer,” Dhanneth said with a bitter edge.

  Formation instinct. It would not do to belabor the realities of the situation, which Dhanneth surely understand better than he did. “All right,” Jedao said. “What happened to the swarm’s original general? The details, if you please.”

  Dhanneth’s shoulders pulled back. “He resisted the hexarch. He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He’s dead,” Dhanneth said in a scoured-out voice.

  “Was he important to you?”

  Dhanneth smiled humorlessly. “Not anymore.”

  Formation instinct again, or something more personal? Jedao didn’t know how hard to press. He didn’t want to alienate the man further. “Tell me something else, then,” Jedao said. “The hexarch talked about successor states and despots and protector-generals in what’s left of the hexarchate. What are they like? Are any of them honorable?”

  “No,” Dhanneth said with chilling conviction. “It’s the same all over. Anyone could tell you that.”

  A quiet cold ran through Jedao’s bones. It was a bad situation, but he might be able to talk himself through it if he treated it like a game. The first rule of any game was to assume you could win, even if you had to hunt through the universe’s cracks for a strategy, even if you had to turn the pieces inside-out, even if you had to tell so many lies to the opponent that they couldn’t figure out which way was up.

  Jedao had to win this war for Kujen because otherwise Kujen would turn to someone else. Kujen seemed to like him. That gave him a little leeway—if he was careful. Besides, if the hexarch needed him, it was Jedao’s duty to do his best, for the hexarchate’s sake, if nothing else.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nine years ago

  IN THE END, Brezan chose a base of operations based on the fact that no one there had tried to shoot his supporters in the last two weeks (eight-day, per local practice). He didn’t expect this state of affairs to last. Among other things, the local Shuos who were supposed to serve as makeshift riot police had suffered a schism. Maybe more than one schism. It was hard to tell.

  He’d ended up on Krauwer 5, one of the more recently terraformed planets. “Recently” meant two centuries ago, in this case, but there was some ecological complication that meant that the planetary governor was a Nirai instead of the more usual Andan or, perhaps, a Rahal appointee. More to the point, said Nirai, a rotund woman named Lozhoi whose hair had been styled in loose curls, had contacted Brezan and bluntly asked for his protection. Although she wore Nirai ceremonial clothes, robes of gray and black, they looked as if she’d slept in them.

  “Why me?” Brezan asked, just as bluntly.

  “You’re here,” Lozhoi said, “and you have a swarm. More importantly, I’ve been paying attention to your body language in your bulletins. You strike me as honest.”

  Brezan flushed. He’d been imprinted with standardized kinesics as part of the formation instinct injection back in Kel Academy, but he wouldn’t be surprised if those had decayed too. The joys of being the hexarchate’s second-most-notorious crashhawk, he thought.

  Lozhoi wasn’t done. “Honest is as honest does, of course, when it comes to government,” she went on. Brezan was starting to get the idea that, despite her owlish face and rumpled appearance, Lozhoi had gotten her position because she was competent. “But if you’re sincere about reforming government, and I think you are, then you’re going to need allies from the ground up. That’s where I can help.”

  “What’s in it for you?” Brezan said.

  Lozhoi squinted at him as if he’d asked a particularly naive question. “When I first came here twenty-four years ago,” she said, “the previous governor had left things in shambles. One large coalition of workers was on the verge of being declared heretics. Like that would have helped.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  She said, with disarming modesty, “I went down to their meeting places and asked to have tea with them. Four months passed before anyone would take me up on the offer. Granted, I don’t even like tea. But eventually they figured out that I wanted as few people to be handed over to the Vidona as possible.”

  “Must have made you popular with the local Vidona,” Brezan said.

  “Oh, at first I was told I absolutely couldn’t do what I was doing. But you know what, every day my invitation to tea was declined, I went over to the Vidona overseer’s office and sat myself down right in her doorway. Stared at her as she went about her day. She hated that. She cracked much faster than the workers did.”

  Brezan resolved on the spot never to piss Lozhoi off.

  When Brezan and his honor guard landed in Tauvit, the capital of Krauwer 5, Lozhoi greeted him not with soldiers but an assistant who scarcely looked up from his slate. Brezan suppressed a sigh of relief. Emio had pointed out that it wasn’t impossible that Lozhoi was luring him into an ambush, as if he hadn’t thought of that for himself.

  One of the first things Brezan had discovered was that he needed replacements for the official news service that he’d taken for granted all his life. Even worse, he had no idea how to tell reliable news from unreliable news. The gossipy networks used by citizens without faction allegiance took on a sudden and not always appetizing prominence.

  At the moment, Brezan relied on Lozhoi for local news, and had a hastily appointed assistant keep an eye on events in Tauvit. For the rest of the hexarchate, or more accurately the shattering remnants of it, he was dependent on Hexarch Mikodez’s dispatches. He was painfully aware of how much those dispatches must be eliding. Thousands upon thousands of worlds, how was he supposed to keep track of them all? The sad answer was that he couldn’t.

  Emio had stayed on to serve as Brezan’s liaison with what she termed “all right-thinking Shuos.” Brezan assumed that she had orders to shoot him and stuff him into a recycling chute if he proved troublesome.

  At the moment, Brezan was proofreading a pamphlet on the latest regulations that he’d scheduled to go out tomorrow morning (revised calendar), where “morning” meant midday according to planetary time. But Cheris’s new calendar wouldn’t do him any good if he didn’t start adhering to it in matters small and large, so midday it was. At least it wouldn’t be going out in the middle of Tauvit’s night.

  Brezan set his slate down and rubbed his eyes. “I wish I had some idea whether these were having an effect,” he muttered to Emio.

  Emio obligingly poured him a glass of water without being asked. He hated that. “Propaganda has vetted them,” she said. “There’s no point in retaining experts if you’re not going to make use of them.”

  Brezan scowled. “It feels like cheating.”

  “You have got to get over your squeamishness,” Emio said without any trace of sympathy.

  Brezan shook his head, remembering the argument they’d had over the use of Shuos instigators: agents hidden in the general populace, seeding rumors and opinions favorable to the new regime. Emio had won. Brezan still hated himself for giving way
, especially since it was impossible to tell with any certainty whether the instigators were having the desired effect.

  “Well, that’s it,” Brezan said. “I’m going to—”

  Just then the grid said, “Call for High General Kel Brezan on line 10-1.”

  “The hell?” Brezan said. 10-1 was reserved for personal calls.

  “Get some sleep,” Emio told him. “If it’s important they’ll call again, as my grandmother always used to say.”

  “No, I want to know.” Brezan made a shooing motion at her. “Pretend that you’re going to give me some privacy, even if I know your hexarch has this office bugged to hell and gone?”

  Emio refused to take the bait. “If you insist. Just promise me you’ll get sleep at some point.”

  “What is it with all you Shuos and healthy living habits, anyway?”

  “Someday you’re going to meet Shuos Zehun,” Emio said, clearly unaware that Brezan already had, “and then you’ll understand.”

  After the door had shut behind her, Brezan said to the room, “Someday I’m going to meet Zehun again, and eat an entire cake in front of them, just to annoy them.” In real life he knew he’d never dare to do any such thing.

  “Call for High General Kel Brezan on line 10-1,” the grid said again, with its usual inhuman patience.

  Brezan took a moment to check himself in the mirror, something he was only just getting in the habit of doing. Being de facto head of state: almost as good as having a drill sergeant for improving your grooming habits. Not that he’d been slovenly as a staffer, exactly, just... not a public figure, either.

  “Accept the call,” Brezan said, simultaneously hoping the person on the other end hadn’t already given up and dreading who it might be.

  The image that the grid projected before him belonged to his older sister Miuzan. Miuzan was a twin, but he’d never had any trouble telling her apart from Ganazan even when they’d all been children. Among other things, Miuzan had always been the bossy one. Not that Brezan planned on saying that to her face.