Revenant Gun

by Yoon Ha Lee

  “Special move orders for Commander Chwen,” Jedao said, resisting the temptation to speak more rapidly. He needed to project calm. Chwen commanded the second warmoth in Tactical One. “In a moment the Revenant is going to charge. When it does, you will take up the formation’s primary pivot until further notice.” He might not have as many warmoths as Inesser and her friends, but he had enough that one moth out of place wouldn’t cause the formation’s geometry to degenerate into uselessness.

  As he’d expected, the panel lit to indicate that Chwen had a question. Jedao was strongly of the opinion that Chwen needed to learn trust sooner rather than later. The order was clear enough. “Commander Chwen,” he added coolly, “acknowledge.”

  After two seconds, the light turned amber. He would have preferred prompter acknowledgment, but it would do for a start.

  “Special orders for the Revenant,” Jedao said, training his regard on Commander Talaw. “Weapons, charge the shear cannon.” He must remember to send Kujen a thank-you note for the weapon’s mercifully short activation time. “On my mark, we will rush the Three Kestrels Three Suns on a direct intercept course.”

  He didn’t intend to ram Inesser’s command moth. That would be stupid, if possibly also amusing to whatever fox spirits lurked out in space watching human antics. But the more he could scare her, the better. Failing that, he might as well use his reputation for being crazy.

  “Course plotted,” Navigation said. Her shoulders were hunched.

  Jedao wished he could tell her to cheer up. It wouldn’t help, so he refrained.

  “Shear cannon charged,” Weapons said after that.

  Don’t do this. The tarnished voice again.

  Give me one reason why not, Jedao thought, on the grounds that it would be best if his crew didn’t find out he was hearing voices. He’d seen no evidence that anyone else heard the Revenant. I can try to spare the moths—if nothing else, captured moths might make for useful assets, which was how he planned to sell the idea to Kujen—but I still need to overcome the hostiles.

  You can win without it. You have a history of improbable victories.

  Great, now it was paying him backhanded compliments by way of incredibly stupid tactical advice. The whole point of the shear cannon was that he could use it to attack into hostile calendrical terrain. Certainly he had no intention of advancing into the Compact’s space.

  It added, reluctantly, The cannon hurts me.

  I don’t have a lot of options, Jedao said.

  Inesser’s immense swarm didn’t advance far; didn’t have to. Jedao had studied the meticulous, beautifully formatted reports on the shear cannon’s performance characteristics. He waited until the enemy tripped the virtual wire he’d determined beforehand, then said, “Mark.”

  The Revenant hummed as it sprinted toward the Three Kestrels Three Suns. The vibrations transmitted themselves throughout the entire seat despite the webbing holding Jedao in place. Talaw was leaning forward, scrutinizing one of their subdisplays. Meraun, for her part, had an air of callous cheer. Jedao got the impression that not much fazed her.

  “On my mark,” Jedao said, “fire the shear cannon.” He thanked whoever had given him his augment. The inner ticking awareness of passing time would enable him to time this more precisely than if he had to stare at a watch.

  Inesser’s swarm was coalescing, the pivots moving into place. Closer, closer, closer—

  “Mark,” Jedao said.

  Weapons grimaced and jabbed one of the controls. “Shear cannon fired.”

  No explosions; no fireworks. But Jedao bit his tongue involuntarily at the sudden agonizing static in his head. The cloying taste of blood flooded his mouth. He could hear the Revenant screaming. “Shut it off!” Or at least that was what he tried to say.

  “Sir?” Talaw said grudgingly. “Could you be more specific?” Their voice came as from a distance spun from cobwebs.

  The Revenant’s voice ground out, I tried to warn you.

  That only aggravated the pain that filled Jedao’s skull. If it got any worse, his head would fall off. And if that made it stop hurting, he would welcome it.

  The roaring dimmed, and with it the pain. Everyone in the command center was staring at him as though he’d sprouted gills, with the exception of Doctrine, who was hunched trying to look inconspicuous. That answered the question of whether anyone else could hear the static, or the Revenant.

  More to the point, his reaction had disrupted operations in the command moth. Unforgivable. Talaw’s face was drawn tight with distaste as they wrestled with some inner decision.

  “Commander,” Jedao rasped, “ignore that. Scan, Protector-General Inesser’s status?”

  “Complete formation collapse,” Scan said, awed. “Everything’s jumbled out of place like that time with my baby cousin and the cats and my brother’s yarn stash.”

  Dhanneth had already zoomed in on the relevant area of the tactical subdisplay for Jedao’s benefit. The swarm moths were in disarray, disrupting the necessary geometry. To be more precise, the shear cannon had stretched the underlying weave of spacetime. The moths had moved accordingly.

  Jedao wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep for a year, or until the pain was gone. But he wasn’t finished. “Communications.” He wasn’t sure the words had clawed out of his throat until the man straightened, awaiting his orders. “Tell General Inesser that she can agree to a meeting to discuss terms, or—”

  Communications wasn’t paying attention. He gulped. “Sir, message from the hexarch.”

  Jedao kept speaking. “—she can watch me dissect her swarm into pieces so tiny you’d need tweezers to put it back together. Her choice.” With any luck, she would discuss terms. He didn’t want to kill more people than absolutely necessary.

  Wrong move. Communications, thwarted of Jedao’s attention, played the message for Commander Talaw instead. Kujen’s image flared into life before Talaw, almost in the middle of the command center. “Countermand,” Kujen said in a voice like black ice. “Commander Talaw, relieve General Jedao of command. You hold the swarm for the duration. You are to take advantage of the enemy’s disarray to destroy Isteia Mothyard to complete the calendrical spike. Once you have achieved your objective, you will retire and rendezvous with Tactical Two. At no point are you to make further contact with the protector-general. Are my instructions clear?”

  Talaw nodded sharply. “Absolutely clear, Hexarch.” Then they smiled. “Doctrine, have someone escort Shuos Jedao from the command center. The hexarch’s instructions take priority.”

  Jedao, the Revenant said, but its voice was weak.

  I could fight this, Jedao thought. But he didn’t think he could take down the entire command center. Instead, he sat and watched until two Doctrine officers entered. It didn’t escape his notice that both of them topped him by a head, and outmassed him correspondingly, as if they expected him to wrestle them on the way out.

  Jedao unwebbed himself and stood. “I’m ready,” he said. “Fight well, Commander.”

  Talaw disdained to answer.

  As Jedao exited the command center, he heard Talaw give the order to bomb Isteia Mothyard.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE CELL CONTAINED a bench that provided both a place to sit and a place to sleep, and a commode. A see-through barrier separated Jedao from the rest of the word. Across from him was another cell. A Kel in low formal napped on her own bench. She’d kicked her boots into the corner in a display either of slovenliness or defiance. That, or the boots pinched.

  He occupied himself for the first half-hour (was it a half-hour? They’d disabled his augment and, by extension, its chronometer) inspecting the cells for possible ways out as he concocted stories about how the Kel soldier had ended up in the brig. Maybe she’d smuggled a pet into barracks, and they’d caught her sneaking morsels of rice to her ferret/scorpion/monkey/snake. Maybe she’d showed up to drill wearing her shirt inside-out. Or napped on duty, or mixed up the lubricants for t
he gun mounts, or—

  She had woken and was staring at him. More accurately, she’d scrunched herself up in a corner of her own cell as if she thought he could kill her with a look.

  “Hello,” Jedao said, hoping he sounded friendly. “What’d you do to get yourself locked up?”

  She startled when he addressed her. “Sir?” Her voice was muffled by the barrier, which meant his was as well.

  “Tell me why you’re here.”

  Her eyes were still white-rimmed, but she answered. “I like to sleep in. Sir. It doesn’t mix real well with soldiering. Every so often I miss the reveille and end up here. They say there’s some kind of fault in my augment, but it’s cheaper to toss me back here for fucking up than to fix it.” She bit her lip, then burst out, “I’ll try to do better, sir, I swear! Please don’t—please don’t—” She shut up.

  Fox and hound, she thought she was in here with him as some kind of personal punishment. “I’m here for the same reason you are,” Jedao said, which only made her eyes widen further, this time in incredulity. “I mean, not the sleeping part. The failure to go along with orders part. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Of course, since they were both here, and she was talking to him after all, maybe he could learn something about her, and about the ordinary soldiers that he didn’t get much opportunity to interact with. Even if she probably would rather that he leave her alone. But she was staring at him, and he doubted she’d relax so long as he was in the brig with her.

  “Does it bother you,” Jedao said, “being shunted down here?”

  “I’m just garden Kel,” she said after a hesitant pause. “I do well enough when I have some sky overhead, not all these walls. When the action picks up, things will go better for me. Begging your pardon, sir.”

  “‘Garden Kel’?”

  “Guessing no one used the term around you. It’s one of the nicer ones.”

  “Infantry, then.”

  She nodded, fidgeting.

  “Have you seen a lot of action planetside?”

  “A couple of campaigns,” she said. “One of them was real interesting. Some genius decided it’d be pretty to stick a station in the middle of a planet’s rings, nice view for an artists’ retreat. But you know artists.” He didn’t, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting her. “They made the mistake of broadcasting heretical performance art. One corporal in my unit got a hold of a couple unauthorized clips. Real pretty stuff, all gymnastics-like. But we were supposed to go in and blow the place apart, so that’s what we did.”

  Jedao blinked. “You didn’t get in trouble because of the clips?”

  “The officers don’t usually bother with that stuff unless it’s radioactively heretical.” She gulped—apparently she’d just remembered that he was an officer. Or something like one. “They got better stuff to mess with.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  Her voice trembled. “I’m Kel Opaira. Just my bad luck to be here while there’s fighting going on, but it could be worse. At least I can, I can catch up on sleep. And it’s not like you were going to land infantry on the mothyard if you were planning to blow it up, were you? But what are you doing down here? Don’t they need you up in the command center?”

  “Not the hexarch’s opinion, apparently,” Jedao said.

  This got her attention. “You let him boss you around? Isn’t he afraid of you?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to tell.”

  “You trust a civilian to do your job?”

  He seemed to have hit on some issue of Kel professional pride. “How do you hear about all this from down here?” Jedao said. Especially if she’d been asleep?

  Opaira shook her head. “They don’t tell you much, do they?”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “Well,” he said, “you can remedy that.”

  “Not anyone’s secret, really.” Opaira held up her left arm. “Wired for heat pulses in here, see? Kel drum code, everything all in rhythm, so the unit can get info on incoming hostiles or whatever the hell. But there’s also a bunch of chatter when things get boring. And, I mean, I don’t know what it’s like for someone like you, but for us garden Kel, things get boring a whole bunch. Your augment’s damped, right? But they don’t bother blocking the heat pulses.”

  “Which I don’t have because I’m not garden Kel.”

  “Or Kel at all.” Her voice dipped pityingly.

  Jedao couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have minded her life for himself. Waking up (or not) at reveille. Taking mess with the rest of the company in the designated hall. Infantry drill, the constant friendship of weapons. And always the humming awareness that if you died, you didn’t have to die alone.

  “You’re right, though,” Jedao said. “I can’t stay here when people might get hurt.”

  “How are you planning on getting out?” she said, wary again. “Can’t just walk out.”

  “I don’t know how the lock works,” Jedao said. “But surely someone does.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Opaira said. “Doctrine officers. Wormfuckers, all of them. Begging your pardon.”

  “What would happen if we got into a fight?” Jedao said. How could he get someone to let him out?

  Opaira winced. “Rather not, sir. You have—you have a bit of a reputation. Would rather live.”

  Huh. “Would a medical emergency do it?”

  “Oh, that’s an old one. They won’t fall for it.” She reconsidered. “Well, I guess you could bust up the shitter or something, but honestly, you want to end up pissing in the corner if the hexarch gets petty? I bet he’s the petty type.”

  I bet so too, Jedao thought, but he didn’t say that out loud. He’d just experienced Kujen’s maddening arbitrariness firsthand, after all. And Kujen would be monitoring him here.

  Jedao reinspected the commode anyway. Like all the furniture, it was securely affixed to the floor. He didn’t see any obvious bolts he could try to pry out.

  “All right,” he said, “that’s not going to do it.”

  “Good,” Opaira said, on firmer ground. “Sit down and wait, that’s what I always do.”

  “Oh, no,” Jedao said, backing up to the far wall without touching it. He eyed the barrier. He’d discovered early on that it delivered an unpleasant jolt if he touched it. “No point in cutting up my arm or breaking my leg or any such nonsense. The hexarch doesn’t care if I can hold a stylus and it doesn’t matter to him if I’m ambulatory. What he wants out of me is my head. Even if he has a good acting general in Talaw. So—”

  The cell was small. But it gave him a little freedom of movement. He lunged forward, accelerating as quickly as he could, and smashed his head into the barrier.

  Behind him, Opaira squawked in alarm. Good: if she thought this was a terrible idea, so would whoever was monitoring him. For a moment he saw a bright starry flash. The jolting pain, too, hit immediately.

  He backed up again without losing his balance, which impressed him. (Instant soldier: just add water.) Did it again.

  And again.

  And—

  “—permanent damage if you concuss yourself!” Opaira was yelling. “To say nothing of getting your brain cells scrambled!”

  Well, yes. That was the idea. He couldn’t bluff. His monitors would be able to tell. Or he hoped they could tell, because otherwise he was doing this for no good reason. Oh well, it might be educational to see Medical at work from the patient’s side of things.

  Jedao levered himself up again—

  He heard rather than saw the barrier go down just as he reached it, a thrum and a change in air pressure. He took advantage of the othersense: any newcomers? Yes, as a matter of fact. Lowering his head, he swerved and charged through.

  “Ouch, snakefucker!” said the newcomer as Jedao swept her legs out from under her.

  Huh, Jedao thought. I didn’t know I could do that either.

  “Sir—I mean, Shuos, you’re under arre—ouch!”

  By then he was pas
t the newcomer, a squat Doctrine officer. The wolf’s-head emblem at her breast indicated that she was a Rahal. Another person he wouldn’t mind having a chat with. But now that he had escaped, he didn’t have any excuse to linger.

  Despite the augment’s obstinate refusal to talk to him, a map unfurled in Jedao’s mind as he leaned on the othersense. Not only did he know the shearmoth’s layout, he knew where everyone on it was. The movements of individuals were as distinct as the spectra of stars in the forever sky. Even more, he could feel the motions of the other swarm moths as though they were dancing on the surface of his skull.

  That, or he was going crazy after all. But he could stop dead and question the information, or he could make use of it before the beleaguered Rahal stopped him. He chose the latter.

  Jedao dove through the closing doors, which flinched back open at his approach. Handy safety feature, that. Then he skidded left, ran down a dreary segment of hallway lined with forbidding hangings of the hexarchate’s wheel, turned left again, and narrowly avoided crashing into the lift. He’d wondered if variable layout would prove an issue, but it didn’t seem to be active in this section. He bet it had something to do with his disabled augment.

  Curiously, the Rahal didn’t pursue him. At least, he didn’t hear her footfalls behind him. But she would alert the command center of his escape, if she hadn’t already.

  At this point, the inexplicable othersense betrayed him. Not because it was wrong—no one occupied the lift, or was waiting for it with him—but because it failed to account for things like lift codes. The augment must transmit those on his behalf, something else he’d never thought about before. Now he was shut out.

  All right, that wasn’t going to work. Maintenance shaft, then? He couldn’t remember whether those required access codes, too. It beat staying here to be treed, though.

  He retraced his steps back to the intersection and took the hallway curving in the other direction. After passing several mysterious doorways—his sense of whereness told him nothing about the rooms’ function, just a jumbled distribution of masses that he couldn’t translate into visuals—he located a maintenance shaft. He’d never known anyone other than the servitors to use them. Engineering always sent him reports collated from the servitors’ records. Thankfully, whoever had designed the moth (Kujen?) had ensured that the shaft could accommodate a human. Good thinking: what if the moth needed emergency repairs and servitors weren’t available?