Ninefox Gambit

by Yoon Ha Lee

  “Yes, that’s fair,” Jedao said. “I know one thing about the Fortress that you don’t, and it’s because I once attended a live-fire demonstration of the shields’ effectiveness. They didn’t explain how the shields worked, but the shields produced artifacts in the human visible spectrum, nowhere else. I’m not a technician, far from it, but I found that curious. Too convenient.”

  “I’m not sure how that helps us,” Cheris said. Of course, she wasn’t a technician either.

  “If I’m right, the visual chaff is the key to understanding the shield operators. Who are human. The system can’t be grid-controlled – although maybe it can be composite-controlled?”

  Cheris was sure the answer was no, but queried Doctrine to double-check. The answer came quickly. They must have figured it out beforehand and it had probably been sitting in some report awaiting her perusal. “No composites in the heretical calendar,” she said.

  “So we’re dealing with humans. Think of this as an exercise in decryption. Once we crack the language of symbols, we’ll know how to break the operator and force our way in.”

  “Jedao,” Cheris said, “do you have any idea how computationally expensive it is to crack any decent cryptosystem? Even one this old, if it hasn’t been done already?”

  “You’re thinking like a Nirai, not a Shuos or Andan. I doubt the shields were designed this way on purpose. My guess is that the chaff is an unavoidable side-effect of the technology, which is why they’re so keen to hush it up.”

  After an agonized silence, Cheris said, “I need a demonstration. I can’t take this to our officers. Especially after I’ve asked them to masquerade as traitors. But I don’t see how you can possibly make a demonstration before the fact, either.”

  “All right,” Jedao said calmly. “Pick something up, something small, and hold it in your hand, Cheris.”

  “What?”

  “You asked for a demonstration.”

  This was the kind of pointless game that the Shuos were notorious for. One of her colonels had once remarked that a Shuos would never tell you something straight out when they could force you to take an agonizing snaky route to the conclusion by manipulating you with word games. “I don’t see –”

  “Do you want the demonstration or not?”

  Cheris bit back her first response and went to get her luckstone. She slipped it free of its chain. The stone shone in curves of light interrupted by the raven engraving. “All right,” she said. He had better not be wasting her time.

  “You’re going to hold on to that stone,” Jedao said. “Consider that an order, if it helps. I’m going to convince you to let it go before the briefing.”

  Cheris was already unimpressed. What was he going to do, arm-wrestle her for it with the arm he didn’t have anymore? “That’s all?” she said. Then, grudgingly: “I see. The stone is the Fortress. My hand is the shields. This won’t work, Jedao. Even if you have some way of making me fail a simple task, I can’t persuade our commanders like this.” She was pretty sure the Kel commanders would have much the same reaction she was having. Except they would be less polite about it.

  “Oh, we’re not going to bother with rocks –”

  “It’s a luckstone,” she said, more sharply than she had meant to, even if she couldn’t imagine that Jedao knew anything about Mwennin custom. It was her birthday-stone, a gift from mother to child, and the raven was the bird of her birthday-saint. Little things that she never discussed with other Kel, because they wouldn’t understand.

  “My apologies,” Jedao said promptly enough. “In any case, with the officers we need something bigger. We’ve already made an example of Vidona Diaiya –”

  “That was ordinary discipline!”

  “Don’t let go.”

  Her fingers clenched around the luckstone, then relaxed.

  “If it had been to our advantage to save her for future use, I might have advised that instead,” Jedao said. “But that wasn’t the case. No, we need a new target.”

  Target? They were out of hostiles for the moment, unless he wanted her to order up more. Where was he going with this?

  “We can’t demonstrate on the Fortress because that’s what we’re trying to persuade the commanders we can do in the first place,” Jedao said, “so we’ll have to demonstrate on our swarm. We can afford to lose a moth. Diaiya was going to be my expendable, but as it so happens she torched herself before I could make use of her that way.” His voice was utterly level.

  Cheris had a creeping feeling at the back of her neck. How had she forgotten he was a madman? “Diaiya disobeyed orders and broke formation, that’s one thing,” she said, “but the other commanders have done nothing wrong. They don’t deserve to be toyed with.” Assuming he only meant to toy with them, which she had serious doubts about.

  She was now remembering, too, his earlier comment about having a use for Diaiya, back when they’d selected her for the swarm. At the time it had slipped her mind as being nothing important. The knot in her gut told her she had been terribly, terribly wrong.

  “We can’t afford any weaknesses when we go up against the Fortress,” Jedao said. “The swarm has to be ready to obey, and to believe in our methods, whatever they are, even if I’m involved. Not only did the heretics capture the hexarchate’s most celebrated nexus fortress, they had help. That kaleidoscope bomb wasn’t developed and manufactured overnight. In any case, to unite the swarm, we need them focused on an adversary. Framing one of your own commanders for heresy ought to do the trick.”

  Cheris was speechless.

  Jedao’s voice cracked without warning. “My gun. Where did I put my gun? It’s so dark.”

  Cheris bit back a curse. This had to be a ploy, even though she couldn’t see what an undead general would be getting out of playing a bad joke. “Jedao,” she said, trying to sound composed and failing, “there’s no need –”

  Not only was the shadow darker than she remembered it being, Jedao’s eyes had flared hell-bright, and the entire room was heavy with darkness like tongues of night licking inward from some unseen sky. Cheris’s mouth went dry as sand. She’d seen combat before, she’d fought before, and all she could do was freeze and stare like a soldier just out of academy.

  Where was her chrysalis gun? There it was at her waist, that unmoving weight. She had to reach for it, had to unfreeze –

  “General.” Now Jedao was coolly imperious. “I don’t recognize you, but your uniform is irregular. Fix it.”

  She had no idea what had caused him to go mad in the first place, no one did, so she had no idea if he was going mad again. She lost a precious second wondering inanely if snapping a salute would mollify him, then unfroze and fumbled for the chrysalis gun. Just in case.

  The nine-eyed shadow whipped around behind her in defiance of all the laws of geometry it had obeyed until now, and then she knew she was really in trouble. All that time she had spent reading up on her swarm’s high officers and what intelligence they had on the enemy – some of it should have been spent researching Jedao.

  “You shouldn’t be standing still,” he said. His voice was casual, as though he addressed an old friend. “They’ll get you if you stand still. You should always be moving. And you should also be shooting back.”

  “Shooting who?” she said, struck by the awful thought that this was how he had gone crazy at Hellspin Fortress.

  The shadow moved slowly, slowly, pacing her. Perhaps if she kept him talking she could buy time, even figure out what was going through his mind.

  Jedao didn’t seem to hear her. “If you keep waiting, all the lanterns will go out,” he said, his voice gone eerily soft, “and then they’ll be able to see you but you won’t be able to see them. It’ll be dark for a very long time.”

  Lanterns. The Lanterners? Hellspin Fortress? Or some coincidence of imagery?

  The gun was in her hand. She aimed at the shadow, but it was too fast. If she fired, would it send up alarms? She didn’t want to start a panic in her command
moth for no reason. She nerved herself and did it anyway, but the shadow anticipated her and whipped out of the way. The gray-green bolt sparked and dissipated harmlessly against the floor. Her next attempts fared no better. Cheris wished the Nirai had warned her that shooting Jedao wouldn’t be simple.

  Despite the shadow’s movements, he didn’t sound like he noticed that she was trying to shoot him, either. “You brought a whole swarm here,” he said, voice rising. “They have no idea. It’s going to be a million dead all over again.”

  If this kept up she was going to have to aim the gun at herself, terrible hangover or not. But then she’d drop the luckstone; there was still some chance this whole thing was an act. Then why wouldn’t her hands cooperate?

  This would be much easier if she knew him well enough to tell whether this was an aggressively irresponsible mind game on his part, or a genuine sign of insanity. Stop hesitating, she told herself angrily. She knew better than to dither like this.

  Jedao fell silent. In spite of herself, Cheris hoped that Jedao was done testing her, that he would call the game off. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was about to ask him when his voice started up again. This time he sounded unnervingly young, half an octave higher, like a first-year cadet.

  “General?” he said.

  He wasn’t speaking equal to equal this time. He spoke with deference. Fear, even.

  “Sir, the dead. I can’t keep count. I don’t, I don’t – sir, I don’t know what to do next.” The eerie thing was that she couldn’t hear him breathing, despite the raggedness. When he next spoke, his voice wavered in shame, then firmed. “It’s my turn to die, isn’t it? I just have to find my gun in the dark –”

  A long silence.

  And then, quite softly, “My teeth will have to do.”

  Cheris had seized up again, trying to tell herself this was a trick, that it had nothing to do with Hellspin Fortress, or worse, some other incident she couldn’t remember out of the history lessons she had stupidly failed to review. But this time she was sure. She aimed and fired again, fruitlessly.

  “Cheris.” His voice no longer sounded young, and Cheris sensed he was finally in earnest. She half-turned toward the source of the sound, which was across the room from the shadow. Everywhere darkness hung like curtains of sleep. There were starting to be amber points of light not just in Jedao’s shadow, but everywhere, in the walls, in the air, everywhere, like stars coming closer to stare. She had no doubt that when they did, they would reveal themselves as foxes’ eyes.

  Jedao recognized her again: he spoke to her as a subordinate, and formation instinct began to trigger. “Not that way. Or that way, either, if you’re thinking to escape. You’re about to swing left. No, don’t freeze, that’s even worse.”

  In the swarm of lights she couldn’t figure out what to shoot. His speech, rapid but precise, now came from several directions at once, which only confused her further.

  He was half-laughing. “You keep reacting, and you’re reacting with my reflexes, don’t you think I know what you’ll do?”

  Her hands clenched. Another bolt hissed against the wall, to no effect. It wasn’t just the sudden cool malevolence of his voice, or its authority, it was that his reflexes were a part of her, he was in her, she couldn’t get him out.

  On the other hand, if this wasn’t just a game, if this wasn’t pure pretense, then she might be able to trigger his madness and use it against him. Too bad she couldn’t get him to shut up so she could think clearly –

  “You’re determined not to drop the gun, but look at your hand shaking – there it goes, and you’re still fixated on that stupid fucking luckstone. Reprioritize. What’s the real threat – where’s the real game? Go ahead, pick up the gun, try again.”

  Cheris couldn’t make his voice go away and she couldn’t stop reacting like him. As a Kel, she couldn’t help responding to the orders, either. She was going to go ahead, pick up the gun, try –

  Jedao started to laugh in earnest. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die, fledge.”

  The Kel called their cadets that, or inferiors who fell out of line. All her muscles locked up in spite of her intentions. The luckstone felt leaden in her hand. She had taken comfort from it since her mother gave it to her. It gave her none now.

  “You have no idea whether that gun works as advertised on full strength,” Jedao said contemptuously, “or how it works if it does, and you never asked. The Kel don’t get smarter, do they? Go ahead, pull the trigger.”

  The Nirai technician wouldn’t have lied to her –

  She knew nothing of the kind.

  “Think about the name of the gun, fledge. You know what a chrysalis is. Where do you think they put me when it’s time for retrieval? I have to go into a container, and your carcass is handy. Remember that despite the fact that I’m a traitor and mass murderer, one of us is expendable, and it isn’t me.”

  It was horribly plausible. She fired again, but wildly. Sparks; a dance of staring eyes. Again and again. No better luck.

  “Honestly, Captain,” Jedao said, biting down on her usual rank, “if this is a typical example of Kel competence, no wonder Kel Command keeps using a man they despise utterly to win their wars for them.”

  Cheris tried to make herself keep firing. Couldn’t. The shadow revealed itself next to the door, the nine eyes arrayed in an inhumanly broad candle smile. She stared at the shadow and felt herself falling into it, toward the pitiless eyes. They were opening wider: she thought she saw an intimation of teeth in them. It was worse that he had called her captain rather than fledge, that naked reminder of Kel hierarchy. Her nerve shattered: too much strangeness all at once. “General,” she croaked. “I didn’t mean to – I don’t know what you want, sir, I don’t understand the order –” She was talking too much, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “I failed you, sir, I’m sorry, I –”

  “Cheris.” The eyes dimmed, rearranged themselves into the more familiar line.

  “– can’t figure out –”

  “Cheris! I’m done. It’s over.”

  “Sir,” she whispered like a broken thread, “what are your orders?” Her fingers crept toward the chrysalis gun. She made them stop. What if he wanted something else from her? She couldn’t bear the thought of getting it wrong again.

  “Cheris, sit down,” Jedao said gently.

  It took her two tries to take a step toward the chair. But the general wanted it, so it was an order, so she would do it. Wasn’t that how life went, in the Kel?

  “I’m a hawkfucking prick,” Jedao said. Cheris flinched: hawkfucker, fraternizer. “I didn’t realize how badly formation instinct would affect you. You had conflicting orders. The fault isn’t yours.”

  “I am Kel, sir.”

  “I know.” His voice dipped tiredly. “I misjudged. No excuse.”

  She had no idea how to respond to that, so she kept silent. He was her superior. He demonstrably knew how to break her. And yet she was supposed to be able to judge him and kill him if necessary. How did Kel Command expect a Kel to be able to deal with this? The fact that he was always present, always watching her, only made it worse.

  “Cheris. Please say something.”

  She would have bet that he was sincere, except she had thought the same when he was pressuring her to shoot herself. “The chrysalis gun, sir.” Some use it had been.

  “I wasn’t entirely lying about that. It forces me inside and puts us both in hibernation. I don’t know whether it does permanent damage to you. I’m never around for that part.”

  That would have been useful to know much earlier. Naturally, the Orientation Packet hadn’t mentioned any such thing. She didn’t know why she had expected it to be more helpful. But then, she had gotten herself into this situation, hadn’t she?

  Cheris focused on the in-out of her breathing until she felt calm enough to think clearly again. She put the luckstone on the corner of the desk. It made a small click. “I’m done with your game, sir,” she said flatly. “Y
ou win.”

  “Oh, for love of –” Jedao checked himself. “At the risk of alienating you forever, I have to point out that you lost the moment you agreed to play the game on my terms, without negotiating.”

  This was typical Shuos thinking, but she couldn’t disregard it. “You weren’t serious about playing games with the swarm, sir?”

  “I seem to recall someone arguing that the commanders didn’t deserve to be toyed with. No, I wasn’t serious, but it was plausible that I was, wasn’t it? Think about that.”

  She frowned. “Was it worth doing that just to make a point?” She was looking at the luckstone.

  “You have the lesson backwards, Cheris. The luckstone is incidental. I don’t have hands and I can’t hold a gun. When you agreed to be my opponent, what weapons did you think I had?”

  “Your voice,” she said at once, but she had missed the important one. “Your reputation.”

  “Yes. We’ve already told the heretics that I’m facing them.”

  “Garach Jedao Shkan,” she said. Her voice was unsteady. Maybe they should have bannered the Deuce of Gears after all, so the enemy would know to dread them.

  “Anytime you want me to feel like my mother caught me harassing the geese again, go right ahead,” Jedao said with unexpected humor. “In any case, reputation: it’s an awful tool to have, but you can’t escape it, so you must learn to use it.”

  “I understand, sir,” she said. She did. They didn’t call Jedao a weapon for nothing; and fear of weapons was a weapon in itself.

  “Do you?” Jedao said. “Then you’re ready for the plan. Here’s how it’ll go.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  KEL NEREVOR WAS about to say some banal greeting when Cheris showed up at the command center. Instead, Nerevor stared openly, then drew herself up, her face grim.

  Cheris wasn’t wearing her gloves. Both were tucked into her belt. Her hands felt cold and clammy and exposed. The combat knife also at her belt was too heavy, too light, for all that she was used to it. She reminded herself that this part was her idea, even if Jedao had agreed it would work.