Ninefox Gambit

by Yoon Ha Lee

  Jedao didn’t deny the charge. “She’ll need to be wiped,” he said. “Get Medical to inject her with full-strength formation instinct and revert her to fledge-null. Fastest way to make sure they don’t get intelligence out of her.”

  “You’d have to be wiped, Commander,” Cheris said. “Are you sure –”

  “You’re wasting everyone’s time,” Jedao said.

  “I understand that, sir,” Nerevor said steadfastly. “I am Kel. I will serve, even if this isn’t the service I anticipated when I was assigned to your swarm.”

  “Report to Medical,” Cheris said.

  “Sir,” Nerevor said, saluting sharply, then turning on her heel.

  Cheris put the orders in to Medical. Her hands shook, and she felt coldly knotted inside. Going into a firefight would have been better than this pallid safety. Then she nodded at Nerevor’s executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Hazan, who had been listening intently, mouth pursed. “You’re acting commander,” she said.

  Hazan saluted her sharply, seemingly calm. But a tremor passed through the crew.

  “Communications,” Cheris said, “send this message to the Fortress.” She passed it over.

  “Hoppers still on standby, sir,” Navigation said, without quite looking at her.

  “They’ll hold until Commander Nerevor is ready,” Cheris said. “Tactical One and Two, prepare covering fire but await my command. Scan, what is the Fortress’s current status?”

  Scan said, “There’s a lot of –”

  “Sir!” Communications said. “Outgoing message from the Anemone Ward, in the clear and in all directions.”

  Cheris said to Scan, “You first, but make it fast.”

  “There’s a fight by the communications post,” Scan said. “Not definitive, but signatures are consistent with Kel small arms and possibly civilian weapons. No major structural damage to the post. Physical breaches sealed with metalfoam. Toxics in the spectral lines indicate the explosives were class four, but I’m not seeing more of those.”

  “They want it intact, too,” Jedao said. “Hardly surprising.”

  “Inform Colonel Ragath and the infiltrators,” Cheris said. It was vague, but something was better than nothing. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the colors change around her, red to brighter red, red to fox-yellow. “Communications, give us the message.”

  Thanks to the exchanges between Jedao and the heretics’ leader, Cheris had expected plain text. The video took her by surprise: something was wrong with the hologram, and even interpolation had left tracks of snow and cinders in the colors.

  “Andan Nidario to Kel Command.” The man had a warm, rich voice, but the entire right side of his face was a mass of bruises and burns. The act of speech must have been painful. “Hell, to anyone who’s listening.” He canted his head to listen to someone off-camera. “Shuos Jedao is loose and has battered down the Fortress’s shields. Send someone to deal with him, will you? I mean, he might be on our side, but he’s opened negotiations with the heretics, so I find myself unoptimistic. I’m appending our observations, but we’re not going to be able to hold the communications post for long.”

  More commentary from the side, then: “Andan Lia would like to add that we don’t have confirmation that it’s Jedao. Frankly, he blew down the shields in hours, that’s enough evidence for me.

  “When you get here, shoot that tin general Znev Stoghan first. He’s been with the heretics since the beginning.” The rattle of gunfire. “Oh hells, somebody cover the door, will you? Excuse me, I’d better pick up a gun and make myself useful before the painkillers wear off. Just do something with the information, that’s all I ask. Nidario out.”

  “Dump the whole thing to Captain Ko,” Cheris said.

  Hazan said, all black humor, “I’m glad we’re not responsible for spin control, sir. The Andan are usually more discreet, but I suppose he was desperate.” He showed no sign of discomfort at being in Nerevor’s chair: the right approach, even if it nettled her.

  “I killed that man,” Jedao said, not amused, but without regret either. “However, we can only rescue the loyalists if we have troops on site, so the fact that he’s helping my credibility with the heretics is useful.”

  “You expected something like this to happen,” Cheris said slowly. Why was she surprised?

  “I believe in planning ahead. The loyalists have no way of knowing I’m here on Kel Command’s orders and there’s no way to let them know. When I announced my arrival, it wasn’t just to intimidate the heretics. It was to provoke the loyalists into revealing information, which would persuade the heretics in turn. And it forced your swarm to adjust to the fact that they’re being led by a madman and traitor.”

  “That’s a lot of objectives.”

  “It’s only three, and the last one is marginal. You want to accomplish as many different things on as many different levels as you can with each move. Efficiencies add up fast.”

  “Call from Medical,” Communications said. “Commander Nerevor has been prepared, sir.”

  “Load her onto Hopper 1 with the others and send her on her way,” Cheris said, hating herself. In a just world she would feel sick, but instead it was as though she stood outside herself, in a world turned to iron and crystal and cryptic facets.

  “It’s done,” Navigation said after an agonizing eight minutes. “Hopper 1 launched.”

  “Launch the rest,” Cheris said.

  More waiting. Cheris’s guts churned. She was starting to think she would see the color red in afterimage flashes, as she walked out of the command center – if she ever did – and even in the hallways of her dreams.

  No; she had to be honest with herself. What she would see over and over was Nerevor’s face as she volunteered to do exactly what Jedao wanted her to do, what Cheris had let her do.

  “Fortress retrieving Hopper 1 with servitor teams, sir,” Scan said. Her voice wavered. “More fire in the Fortress, source uncertain, but no serious damage to the hoppers.”

  “Instruct Colonel Ragath that loyalists are to be returned to the heretics unless they turn on him,” Cheris said. “He’s to send urgent status reports only.”

  “The colonel acknowledges,” Communications said after a pause that was longer than Cheris liked.

  “Nerevor will suffer very little,” Jedao said then, “although I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming she’s safe. In fledge-null she will only know that her duty is to endure until a Kel officer gives her instructions, and only an unscrupulous Kel will be able to damage her mind. I judge it unlikely that the heretics have Kel among them. Your people do loyalty well.”

  Cheris put pieces of a puzzle together in her head. The pieces didn’t match up. When he had first been anchored to her, he had asked about formation instinct almost as if he had no idea. Subvocally, she said, “For someone who affects not to know much about formation instinct, you’re awfully familiar with its workings.”

  The last of the hoppers was starting the return trip. Cheris wished she was on one of them, away from the cindermoth and the ninefox’s dreadful shadow. Her shadow. Strange how she could distinguish its eyes so easily from every other amber light around her, even if they were the same color.

  “Think about it, Cheris. I learned to judge soldiers’ morale and loyalty when the Kel were individuals. Why would it be hard for me to figure out the standardized version?”

  Then the game with the luckstone, Jedao taunting her to shoot herself, his show of penitence –

  “That’s right,” Jedao said. “I knew exactly when you’d break. I needed to make a point and it was the fastest way.”

  Cheris kept hold of her temper, remembering how she had lost Kel Nerevor. “If you were lying about that all this time, why reveal it now?”

  Was it a new game? And here she had thought she was done being a web piece. At the moment she could have happily incinerated Shuos Academy.

  “Because I know you’re worried about her.”

  She stif
fened. “I doubt you ever cared about your soldiers,” she said.

  His voice was rough. “People say that about me, yes. I won’t argue.”

  “Commander Hazan,” Cheris said abruptly. “I’m going to rest. Alert me immediately if there are new developments.”

  “Of course, sir,” Hazan said.

  Cheris knew perfectly well that she couldn’t escape Jedao in her quarters. She had a better idea.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “IT’S NO USE,” a man was saying. “Look.”

  Nerevor was staring straight ahead at a gray wall, in a room of gray sodden shadows. Restraints of cold metal held her fast, and the shift they had given her was too thin. Her shoulder hurt, and something about her jaw felt wrong, but it was only pain. She was Kel. She would survive as long as it was given her to survive.

  “Your name.” It was the man again, impersonal.

  He was not Kel. She did not have to answer.

  This time a woman spoke. “We already know who she is.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is getting her to respond.”

  “In that case, scare up a uniform and try again.”

  “She’d know the difference,” the man said. “There’s a baseline body language that’s imprinted on cadets along with formation instinct, subtle stuff. A good Shuos infiltrator could fake it. An Andan could enthrall their way around it. We’re just stuck. She’d break all the bones in her body to please a Kel officer, but we’re short of those. Jedao was making sure we were getting nothing but a warm body with the commander’s face attached, and he can undoubtedly restore her, but we can’t. At least the DNA matches records. Cold bastard.”

  Nerevor wasn’t sure what Shuos Jedao had to do with the situation, but she made a note of the mention in case it became useful later.

  “He said nothing about wanting her back,” the woman said. “Probably got all he wanted out of her or he wouldn’t have dumped her on us.”

  “Don’t get ideas.” The man’s voice was still impersonal. “We can get the technicians on the problem and see if they can work her out of fledge-null. There’s a small chance useful information’s buried behind those glassy eyes. We can hold her as long as it takes.”

  The woman had been thinking about something else. “Doesn’t a high officer have to authorize fledge-null in the first place? Who the hell did the Immolation Fox subvert up there?”

  “Subvert or bribe or coerce,” the man said. “We don’t know which.”

  “I’m surprised you wanted to talk in front of her. You’re normally obsessed with discretion.”

  “I wanted to see if there’d be a reaction. Depending on where in the calendrical zones he wiped her, the fledge-state might have chinks. A problem for the technicians, as I said.” The man tapped on the door. “Anything you want to say, fledge?”

  Nerevor didn’t like being called “fledge” by this stranger, but it didn’t matter. He was not Kel. She did not have to answer.

  After they were gone, she listened for gunfire, footsteps. If the Kel meant for her to die here, then she would die here. But she could not help but comfort herself with the idea that her people would come for her if she was brave enough, if she endured enough, if she proved herself worthy of the Kel name.

  Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis

  Priority: Urgent

  From:: Vahenz afrir dai Noum

  To: Heptarch Liozh Zai

  Calendrical Minutiae: Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Partridge, Day of the Hedgehog, I need to program some macros, and fuck the hour.

  My dear Zai, I don’t care how hypnotized you are with Jedao’s potential usefulness, and I don’t care how everyone voted, although it’s nice that you’re practicing. Assuming it is Jedao, which seems more plausible now, he behaved nicely for Kel Command up until Hellspin Fortress, and he behaved nicely for Kel Command up until now. You’d be better off trying to befriend a fungal canister. It might have a sense of loyalty.

  I understand that you’re rattled by the continued delay of the Hafn swarm, but do remember they have to get past General Cherkad. I assure you that Hafn commitment to the Fortress’s liberation is real, but they need time to achieve miracles. The timing is unfortunate, but if we’d waited any longer to take over, the Rahal would have caught us.

  At least we have something in common with the fox general, which is that we both prefer the Fortress to stay intact, or he would have lobbed a few thousand bombs at us once the shields cracked. As it is, we could hold off bannermoths for a while, but the cindermoths change the equation.

  Unfortunately, you allowed Jedao to land troops. We knew this hostage – one Commander Kel Nerevor, formerly of the cindermoth Unspoken Law – was going to bring us little immediate advantage. It was expensive to retrieve her from the Anemone Ward, and we didn’t even get her intact because that goon of Stoghan’s roughed her up.

  The communications post in the Anemone Ward is back in our hands and Jedao’s troops even handed over the loyalists, but I’m bothered by Jedao’s resources. I threatened some videos out of Stoghan’s lackeys, and those aren’t just infantry he landed, those are Kel. I don’t care if they were wearing brown instead of black-and-gold, those are Kel.

  You know the joke, right? If you have a choice between sending a three-year-old to do covert ops and a Kel, you pick the three-year-old because the Kel is too stupid to lie?

  Anyway, where did Jedao get these Kel? If we’re dealing with a legitimate Kel swarm, if Kel Command gave Jedao command – but how did he convince the Kel to surrender one of their high officers? Any other general would be able to rely on formation instinct to shove the order through, but I’m not sure Jedao would inspire that kind of obedience unless he explicitly got Kel Command’s blessing. Yet this seems more likely than the other possibility, which is that the least trustworthy general in Kel history convinced at least one Kel high officer to join him. That’s the problem with formation instinct: if he turned the right individual, he could have taken down the rest.

  The thing is, Jedao isn’t just a traitor, even if people’s brains short out around that fact. He’s also a Shuos. The two aren’t equivalent, despite the Shuos jokes. He was a Shuos assassin before he switched tracks, and there’s circumstantial evidence he did some analyst work as well.

  Anyway, his career with the Kel was unobjectionable. He kept that up for almost twenty years. As if he were under deep cover. All the way up to Hellspin Fortress.

  Hellspin Fortress wasn’t a Kel assault. The Kel wave banners at you before they join battle. You can always see them coming.

  Setting up a deathtrap for not one but two armies – that’s not a psychotic break. That’s a plan with a twenty-year setup. A Shuos plan, to be precise. Ambushes, computer systems going haywire, contradictory orders, weapons failing. To say nothing of the infamous threshold winnowers. Too much fancy shooting with his staff, but it worked.

  No wonder the Nirai have made no progress. They’ve been trying to cure Jedao, but he was never mad to begin with.

  I’ll go you one better. He’s exactly where he wants to be. He’s immortal and he has all the time in the world to carry out his plot, whatever it is. I don’t know why he slaughtered his way into the black cradle. But I will bet you my last sweet bean pastry that even the incomprehensible slaughter served some purpose.

  And we’re the next step in his plan.

  Zai, we’ve got to stop him. We’ve got to destroy him because I don’t care how many Kel swarms we have incoming, he’s the real threat.

  I haven’t felt this alive in ages.

  Yours in calendrical heresy,

  Vh.

  CHERIS PACED THE perimeter of her quarters, determined not to get used to their size; determined to remember what she really was. Then she asked for a slate because she wanted something solid in her hands. A deltaform servitor brought her one: a black slab just thick enough to feel substantial, gold-rimmed so that it winked as she tilted it. The servitor made a worried nois
e. “I’ll be all right,” Cheris said, and it left after an unconvinced pause.

  “You could have asked me about the hostage idea earlier,” Cheris said, “while there was time to come up with alternatives.”

  “You could have anticipated the issue,” Jedao said. “The landing problem shouldn’t have taken you by surprise. You had the same time that I did to come up with a solution. Do you have a better one now?”

  Her eyes stung. She had relied on him instead of thinking for herself. “You have the advantage of being an observer,” she said sharply. “But no. I don’t have a better plan now.”

  “Cheris.”

  She closed her eyes, thinking of Nerevor’s bravery. Jedao had told her that the Kel reacted better when given no time to object to a plan. Fair warning.

  “I saw a solution and set it in motion. That’s all.”

  There was no way to escape his voice.

  “I saw how badly you wanted to go in Nerevor’s stead. She saw it too, you know. That’s why she was willing to sacrifice herself.”

  “I didn’t want to manipulate her into it,” Cheris said.

  A soft pause. “All communication is manipulation,” Jedao said. “You’re a mathematician. You should know that from information theory.”

  “I am not fit to serve,” she said.

  “Cheris,” Jedao said, “you’re Kel. You will serve as long as Kel Command needs you to. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You’re so good at making the Kel follow where you lead,” Cheris said. “How can I trust anything you say?” She raised her tablet and entered a query.

  It wasn’t difficult to bring up the available transcripts of Shuos Jedao’s service. Even though she knew how well-regarded he had been, even though she had studied some of his campaigns, the number of deaths he had inflicted before Hellspin Fortress took her breath away. The Kel had known many generals, and he had been one of the best.