Ninefox Gambit

by Yoon Ha Lee

  Jedao was silent for so long that she thought something had happened to him. Then he said, “It’s dark in the black cradle, and it’s very quiet unless they’re running tests. Out here there are things to look at and I can remember what colors are and what voices sound like. Please, Cheris. Go sleep. You will never realize how valuable it is unless someone takes it away from you forever.”

  “You’re only telling me this to get me to do what you want,” Cheris said.

  “You’ll have to let me know how that works out,” Jedao said. “Something’s bound to go wrong in the Radiant Ward, and they’ll need you.”

  “Need you, you mean.”

  “I said what I meant.”

  Cheris looked around the dueling hall, then let her feet carry her back to her quarters. Before she lay down, she asked, “Are you lonely when I sleep?” He didn’t answer, but this time she left a small light on.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE LAST TIME Kel Naraucher had experienced a grand formation had been in drill for a parade in the City of Filigree Masks, and they hadn’t even ended up using it. Naraucher liked parades. Everything could go wrong, but when you got down to it, no one was going to die. Except that one time with the combustible pigeon, and that had been a tasteless prank.

  The hopper had landed them behind cover of the corrosion gradient, well back, using a captured bay. They assembled the condensed points of a grand formation that had no name. It was heretical, after all. It was hard to concentrate on distances and alignment and where his feet were, even with formation instinct yanking him into position each time the sergeant issued a correction.

  Then the servitors arrived.

  Naraucher had reservations about putting servitors into Kel formations. He didn’t mind them in the usual course of their duties, but this was different. Maybe he was more of a traditionalist than he had reckoned, even though he was the first Kel in his family. He made himself watch as the servitors hovered into position. They were efficient about it, no wasted motion. If he was honest with himself, the emotion the servitors aroused in him wasn’t contempt. It was inadequacy.

  The general had decided they were Kel enough to serve with the Kel. If he was any sort of Kel himself, that had to be good enough for him.

  Servitor attrition was higher than planned for. Major Kel Ula called the colonel and received modified orders of battle. This caused delays as formations were switched to accommodate the numbers and a few people were shuffled into other companies. There were a good forty-three people and servitors left to hang around the rear. Naraucher spent this time daydreaming about spending some time with his brother’s dogs. Dogs were much more pleasant to be around than grumpy fellow soldiers, even with all the slobber. It wasn’t as though there weren’t lots of fluids in warfare anyway.

  “All right,” Colonel Ragath said over the link, and Naraucher paid attention. “Major Ula from Battalion Seven has the van. She’s to make it across the causeway and tunnel down the Radiant Gate. Don’t activate formation pivots until you’re right there. We don’t know how long it’ll take the corrosion squads to twig to the fact that we’re bypassing them. I wouldn’t allow for more than an hour, so don’t dawdle.

  “Once you’re in the Radiant Ward, head straight for that factory. You won’t be able to hold it, but I’m sure creative individuals like yourselves can mess it up bad. Drag things out as long as you can to give the winnower teams a chance to set up. We’ll alert you when it’s time to peel out of there.

  “You may have heard that the winnowers read loyalty-states and are theoretically incapable of fratricide. That’s according to numbers in a machine, not field tests. If you’re stupid enough to stick around for the field tests, I’ll personally lay some flowers on your pyre.”

  Naraucher was with Captain Zhan Goro, right behind Major Ula’s company. He felt a creeping sense that something was watching him, probably from being among so many servitors. It did occur to him that maybe the servitors felt just as awkward being here as he felt about them. Maybe they could talk over drinks someday, although he wasn’t sure what they’d be interested in in place of alcohol.

  The corrosion gradients were supposed to keep the Kel boxed in, and the heretics must have been short of generators or they would already have deployed them. Naraucher had heard Shuos grid sabotage was responsible. He knew the Shuos regarded the Kel as addled younger siblings, but he was glad to have them along.

  The Nirai had been busy with heavy-duty burrowers, preparing a passage to the Radiant Gate. The gate was one of the Radiant Ward’s popular attractions and a defense in itself. It was made of material condensed from a certain dying star. If the entire Fortress had been made of the stuff, they would have been in trouble. Backwards to be grateful for a weakness in one of the hexarchate’s defenses, but there it was.

  The passage was weirdly dank. Naraucher had the morbid fantasy that someone was gardening Kel in confined spaces with the unhealthy blue-white light, and soon it would be time for the harvest. Were the Kel best pickled? Smoked? He hated smoked food, but it seemed appropriate for ashhawks.

  There it was: the Radiant Gate. The entire thing was transparent, although the index of refraction gave Naraucher a headache even from here. Coiled behind the surface were living lines of light, writing and rewriting praises to the hexarchate. The light was alternately gold and bronze and silver, and suffused with a warmth that Naraucher had never ascribed to his government.

  Major Ula’s company wavered for a moment. Then they got themselves sorted out and the pivots started moving into place. A great fierce light sprang up around her company. No, it wasn’t light. You couldn’t read by it or warm your hands by it, but whatever it was, it drew the eye and made it flinch at the same time. It intimated banners and swords held high and six-gun salutes.

  Ula was bannering: surely that was a good sign, the suicide hawk plain to see, even if all they had to represent their general was the null banner. Someone was hissing at him. He remembered to keep up. If the servitors could do their job when they were so new at it, it behooved him to do his.

  Astonishingly, the gate was giving way. The transparent stuff was snaking off in curling vapor. And the light – those radiant words, all the ideals of the hexarchate scribed by poets long dead – the light was funneling free in scrolls and coils, words uncaged, or perhaps words driven off.

  “– is the captain.” The voice on the link was savage even through the crackling. “Word from the colonel. The heretics have woken up. They’ve dropped the corrosion gradient and they’re headed for our rear. Rear units are changing front. We’re to follow the major once she’s through and hit that factory, hope the rearguard can keep the heretics occupied.”

  Naraucher looked again at Ula’s company. This time he noticed something that hadn’t been apparent before. At the edges of the formation, the non-pivot positions, humans and servitors both, were changing into pillars of candescent numbers. Naraucher shouldn’t have been able to recognize the numbers at this distance, but he could. Most but not all were in the high language’s vertical script. Machine Universal was identifiable as such, although he couldn’t read it.

  He couldn’t have justified this conviction, but he would have said that the numbers were numbers that mattered. Birthdays and festival days. A child’s shoe size. The number of times a soldier visited a crippled comrade. The specific gravity of a favorite wine. The number of bullets left in a pistol. The distance from this siege to a childhood home, remembered but never visited.

  The number of soldiers a Kel general was willing to sacrifice to achieve her objective.

  Naraucher wasn’t crying when his company reached the gate’s shriveled remnants, passing through the smoke-memory of people reduced to phantasms of number. But his eyes hurt. Ula’s company had burned up evaporating the gate. He could only do his part: fight through the breach they had won for those who followed.

  IN THE COMMAND center of the Unspoken Law, Cheris listened to the reports. She didn’t
mourn. She had lost the right to mourn. Jedao would have disagreed, which was why she wasn’t talking to him.

  The first recorded Kel formation was a suicide formation. She had learned that at academy sometime and forgotten it. Now she would never forget.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CAPTAIN-ENGINEER NIRAI WENIAT might have been the only person in the swarm who liked threshold winnowers. It wasn’t that he thought their destructiveness was funny, although people had accused him of thinking destruction in general was funny. It was the purity of the winnowers’ function: death that caused death that caused death.

  The universe ran on death. All the clockwork wonders in the world couldn’t halt entropy. You could work with death or you could let it happen; that was all.

  “Sir,” said Nervous Engineer Three, “I’m having trouble getting the – oh, there it goes.” A soft click.

  “Have more confidence,” Weniat said. This had the opposite of the desired effect.

  They were setting up in a park in the Radiant Ward. A bunch of Kel had flushed out the civilians, heroically refrained from shooting the tame deer that begged them for treats, and were now patrolling the perimeter to make sure no nasty surprises turned up.

  Fighting was still going on elsewhere in the ward. One of the infantry captains Weniat was on friendly terms with had passed him word of the Kel-servitor suicide formations. Weniat had been impressed. Clever use of servitors, high time a Kel thought laterally. When he had heard they were going to be commanded by a jumped-up captain no one had ever heard of, he’d thought Kel Command had gone mad, but it seemed the woman had potential after all.

  The park was too quiet. Nervous Engineer Two was glancing around. One of the deer wandered over and had to be shooed off. It seemed to think the winnower might dispense treats.

  “It’s ready, sir,” said Steady Engineer, who had been working quietly all this time.

  The winnower didn’t look like its function. If you didn’t realize what it was, you might mistake it for a pretty kinetic sculpture, all looping wires and spinning wheels and interconnected shafts. Weniat, who had understood the relevant mechanics since he was thirteen years old, knew better.

  “It’s Weniat,” he said over the link. “Teams Two through Four, status.”

  “Team Two preparations complete.”

  “Team Four here. Estimate another sixteen minutes, we’re having a minor issue with the – look, you’re holding it upside-down. Let me –” Silence.

  “Team Three, sir, we’re ready.”

  Team Four figured out what they were doing in thirty-eight minutes. Two of its members were borderline incompetent, but they were under an especially vigilant lieutenant.

  “Weniat to Colonel Ragath,” he said once he had confirmed that nothing had come unscrewed at the last second. “All winnowers deployed. I recommend you get the Kel the fuck out of here.”

  “Captain,” Ragath’s long-suffering voice came back, “one of these days I’ll figure out why the Nirai can recite transcendental numbers to hundreds of digits while drunk out of their minds, but can’t remember their own ranks.”

  Weniat was impressed that the colonel knew about transcendental numbers. He must stop underestimating the Kel.

  “Do you wish to evacuate any personnel, Captain?”

  “No, sir,” Weniat said. Everyone here was a volunteer. The Nirai could make informed judgments on this better than the Kel could. It was their job to understand the math.

  “Very well,” Ragath said. “Once the heretics notice we’re pulling out, things will go to hell fast. I’ll keep you informed of the situation.”

  “Are we winning, sir?”

  Slight pause. “You could call it that. Colonel Ragath out.”

  Time passed.

  More time passed.

  The deer wandered by again. Nervous Engineer Three threw rocks at it until it went away.

  “How long does it take the Kel to shoot their way out, anyway?” Nervous Engineer Five, who tended to whine.

  “Key phrase,” Steady Engineer said, “shoot their way out. I’ve seen you with a gun, you think you could do better?”

  “I hear something,” Nervous Engineer Four said in an undertone. People crashing through the park, twigs snapping. They weren’t here to pet the deer.

  “Weniat to Colonel Ragath,” Weniat said urgently. “Complication. Patrol approaching our position. Not sure how many.”

  There were only five people in each winnower team.

  “I’ve got three slow Kel companies,” Ragath said after a moment. “However, your mission has priority. Trigger the winnowers when you see fit.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Do your job, Captain. Colonel Ragath out.”

  The noises were getting closer. Voices calling out to each other.

  “Weniat to all teams.” He was shivering with mixed dread and anticipation. “Activate all winnowers.”

  Weniat and his team were standing in the winnower’s shelter zone. All modern winnowers provided a shelter zone for their teams. It was anyone’s guess as to whether this model’s would work as specified.

  The first winnowers hadn’t had shelter zones at all.

  The winnower made sounds like a furnace exploding, like wineglasses singing shattered, like bells slamming from side to side. It didn’t give off light, but spewed the kind of wind you would get if you twisted a world’s worth of clouds into a spindle and let go after a hundred years.

  The shelter zone was working, indicated by a faint lambent glow. The question was whether the winnower itself was having any effect. Here in the park, amid the trees’ long shadows, it was hard to tell.

  Wait. There was a whisper. A knot in a tree was opening into a cracked eye. A strange blemished radiation glared from it.

  The deer had wandered back toward the noise. The winnower clattered, and it reared up. Light bled from the deer’s eyes, the color of scars and unwhole moons. It staggered a few steps before falling. Curved gashes opened in its throat and flanks, from which tiny teeth gleamed, and there were snapping noises. There was something comical about the angles the deer’s legs made.

  Round shapes boiled out of the gashes. Eyes. All of the eyes were looking at the winnower.

  They were in the shelter zone. They were safe.

  Weniat had been holding his breath. “Weniat to all winnower teams. Status.”

  “We hit some birds, sir.” Team Four. “There’s a residential complex barely visible from our position. Hard to be certain, but it looks like – yes, there we go. A plague of light.”

  Team Three: “I’m sorry, sir, ours is producing the safety zone but is otherwise nonoperational. We’d attempt a repair, but it’s impossible to reach the affected components without leaving the zone.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Weniat said. “You’ll soon be in danger from the other winnowers. I’d prefer we all get out intact.”

  Four winnowers was overkill even for a ward. One would have been fine. The others had been in case of the inevitable malfunction.

  Team Two was clinical as always. “All systems functioning within parameters, sir.”

  “Weniat to Colonel Ragath. Three winnowers operational, sir. We don’t have a good way of gauging what ‘operational’ means in this –”

  “They’re working,” Ragath said flatly. “Captain Jaghun set up video for us before the radiation caught up to her company. Captain Iziade was within eyeshot of the passage out, but I’d had it sealed. The heretics caught on fast. They’ve already locked down everything else; we’re cooperating to contain the damage. Scan’s shot to hell with the winnowers active, but you may be the only people left alive down there.”

  The ward’s population had been estimated at 43,000 people. It wasn’t that the number was high. It wasn’t. Weniat knew what large numbers looked like. It was the ratio. Everyone dead.

  At least it would have been quick. Not painless, but quick. Of course, to say that cleaning up all the corpses was g
oing to be a hassle was an understatement. Not his problem, luckily.

  Weniat, in a rare exercise, recovered enough humanity to say, “I’m sorry about your soldiers, sir.”

  Ragath ignored this. “Leave the winnowers running for another hour just in case, then shut them off. We’ll retrieve you, but in case of some disaster on our end you know what to do.”

  Destroy the winnowers. They couldn’t be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

  “One of these days you’ll tell me to do something hard, sir,” Weniat said.

  “Go fuck a power socket, Captain,” Ragath said without heat, and signed off.

  “YOU’RE CERTAIN?” CHERIS asked Colonel Ragath. “We’re having the expected problems with Scan up here.”

  “We’re certain,” Ragath said. “We’re extracting the winnower teams now. Nothing left but fungus and corpses. Thanks to Captain Jaghun, we even have a video of some creative but misguided soldier’s attempt to survive by pulling her eyes out with her fingers. Didn’t work, of course.”

  Neither of them mentioned the fact that the winnowers hadn’t respected loyalty-states. Ragath had reported the destruction of three Kel companies earlier. There was nothing more to say about it.

  “Thank you for your work, Colonel, and my regards to the winnower teams,” Cheris said. “Keep me informed of further developments.”

  “Naturally, sir.”

  “He approves of you,” Jedao said.

  “I couldn’t tell,” Cheris said. Out loud: “Still no luck, Scan?”

  “We’re not likely to get readings on that hemisphere for another four hours, sir.”

  “All that,” Cheris said subvocally, “and it wasn’t even the main assault. We depopulated a ward as a distraction.” At least the heretic Gerenag Abrana, whose holdings and supporters had been concentrated in the Radiant Ward, would be sure to take notice.

  “The best feints,” Jedao said, “look like real attacks.”