Юн Ли - Revenant Gun

As a test, he slowed and closed his eyes. The othersense didn’t go away. In fact, now that he knew he had it, he couldn’t make it go away. Kujen and Dhanneth continued forward. He examined the rest of his surroundings—he could sense in all directions, a handy trick—and began detecting other moving masses that he suspected were either people or, for the smaller, denser ones, servitors.

Better not reveal this to anyone else until he knew more about where it had come from. He was pretty sure standard-issue humans didn’t randomly sense mass. He hurried to rejoin the other two.

At last they arrived at an enormous pair of doors. Jedao could have sworn that they materialized between one step and the next. The doors sheened black with a faint silver scatter as of stars, marked with the Nirai voidmoth emblem in brighter silver. They slid open at Kujen’s approach, unnervingly noiseless.

Jedao didn’t pause or look left or right, up or down, as he followed Kujen across the threshold, despite the way his back prickled. He had to get this right. There was no other option. Behind him, he heard Dhanneth’s ragged breathing, but he didn’t dare look around to see what the matter was.

Kujen had led them into a hall with a high arched ceiling and pillars of black veined with gold. More than the lanterns with their trapped, frantic moth-shapes throwing irregular shadows across the dark walls, Jedao noticed the Kel commanders, a row about ten across and ten deep.

The Kel commanders had, almost as one, knelt before Kujen. Jedao’s othersense was momentarily dizzied by the coordinated movement. Although the commanders’ attention should have been focused on the hexarch, he couldn’t escape their consternation. Some of it was directed at him, revulsion so strong he could feel its pressure. But some of them were eyeing Dhanneth with unambiguous shock. Did they consider Dhanneth to have sold out by serving him?

The temperature in the hall should have been comfortable, but all Jedao could think of was winter, bleak winds in a world frozen dark. There were black-and-gold uniforms everywhere, including his own. He craved any splash of color as relief from the monotony of all the black.

“I trust everyone slept well,” Kujen said. The light in his eyes suggested that he knew exactly what effect this setup was having on the Kel. “I promised you a new general. Here he is.” He waved a hand, indicating that everyone should stand.

Jedao hadn’t counted on such an abrupt introduction. The six staff heads in front exchanged stony glances. The commanders had faces as still and blank as ice. Jedao had no idea why he was smiling, or what to say, even if he’d memorized that speech beforehand. Not saying anything wasn’t an option, either, even in the face of their muted hostility. So he opened his mouth—

“You know my name,” he said with a bite of humor. “You don’t seem to have done a very good job executing me.”

His gaze was drawn immediately to the commander he recognized as Kel Talaw. Talaw was a stocky alt whose eyes narrowed as they stared back at Jedao. And Talaw’s hostility wasn’t muted at all. Their face blazed with naked hatred even as the entire hall plunged stone-silent.

Fuck , Jedao thought. What had possessed him to say that? Especially in that tone of voice?

He couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t apologize. That would only make him look weak. Better to be a callous bastard than to lose credibility.

Besides, there was no getting around the fact that everyone knew more about Hellspin Fortress than he did. Trying to win the Kel over with charm would have been disastrous anyway. At least they had no idea what was going on inside his head. He would just have to lie too well for them to deduce how out of his depth he was. The sad thing was that the lie was better for morale.

Bad sign: Kujen’s eyes had crinkled faintly in approval. The expression only lasted a fraction of a second, but Jedao had been watching for his reaction.

Fine. Jedao let his smile narrow. “I understand there was an earlier failure of discipline in the hexarch’s direction.” Stupid to pretend it hadn’t happened; might as well address it head-on. “If you feel like betraying someone, you can start with me instead.” Great. He had just challenged all the commanders to duels or the next best thing, and a lot of the Kel excelled at dueling, but he couldn’t stop. “We’re going to be fighting other Kel. Is this going to be an issue?”

He wished he could blame the uniform for messing with his head, but he knew better.

Commander Nihara Keru raised her head: Tactical Two. The plainness of her face was offset by her startling pale gray eyes. Everyone else in the front row had brown eyes. “I would speak, sir,” she said. Her voice, high and crisp, had its own lilt of humor.

She might be the first person besides Kujen who didn’t hate him, not that Jedao had met many people yet. That also made her a potential threat. Don’t pause, don’t pause, don’t pause. “Commander Nihara Keru,” he said. Her eyebrows flicked up: she hadn’t been sure he’d know her name, although he had made a point of memorizing names and faces. “Say what’s on your mind.”

Talaw’s mouth twisted. The rest of the commanders, less senior than Talaw or Nihara, were grimly attentive. For that matter, the staff heads looked even more uncomfortable. Jedao was trying to determine whether Talaw and Nihara disliked each other. If so, his life had gotten more interesting.

“Sir,” Nihara said, “what are our objectives? This is a large swarm, but it’s an immense galaxy.”

Jedao already liked her. “Our purpose is calendrical warfare to reunify the hexarchate so it can stand against incursions from foreigners,” he said, meeting her eyes. He was lying about this, too. Kujen’s strategic notes had suggested that he cared about the restoration of the hexarchate’s historical boundaries, but, weirdly, not so much about the occasional trifling invasion. Jedao would have to figure out what that implied later.

He continued talking. “We will start with attacks to realign the calendar in the Fissure”—the border region contested by the Compact and some smaller states, where the high calendar had lost its dominance—“and expand from there. There’s only this one swarm to start with, but I killed an entire army of you once and I got back up, and you’re the fucking military faction. I say we have a chance. But it’s a better chance if we’re all pointed in the same direction.”

There was a stir at that. He couldn’t believe he’d just joked about massacring Kel, except at this point there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t have believed about himself.

Nihara interrupted by laughing. Talaw’s mouth tightened in disapproval. “All right, sir,” Nihara said. “That’s fair.”

“Charmed,” Jedao said. “Major, if you’d bring up the map—”

Dhanneth did as requested.

Jedao didn’t expect that his overview of their target, Isteia System, held many surprises for his audience. The system used to house a major mothyard, specifically for the construction of cindermoths, before falling victim to sabotage. Kujen wanted the swarm not only to destroy it before it resumed production, but to do so on the anniversary of Kel Command’s demise. Isteia was expected to be on high alert. If they could carry off a victory on that day—the more spectacular the better—the resulting calendrical spike would, according to both Kujen and everyone in Doctrine, swing the disputed territory back to Kujen’s preferred calendar. Jedao had snooped on some of the mathematics for the hell of it, querying the local grid for help with the computer algebra system. The junior Doctrine officer whose work he’d spot-checked had looked as if he’d rather arm-wrestle a tiger.