Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

The Rahal rose and saluted. She was pale and reed-thin, and Cheris wouldn’t have suspected her of being able to break a twig, but her voice was strong. “Captain-magistrate Rahal Gara, sir,” she said.

Cheris nodded at Nerevor. The commander wasn’t part of a composite, but her profile had indicated that she preferred to work independently. Since they couldn’t rely on composites working in a heretical calendar anyway, this wasn’t necessarily bad.

Cheris said, “Have Navigation plot the most direct route to the Fortress of Scattered Needles” – she gave parameters that would allow the less powerful moths to keep up. “Stellate formation. That should get us to the afflicted zone in 21.3 days, and then we’ll have to switch to invariant propulsion.”

“Noted,” Nerevor said crisply. The Navigation marionette, which had long blue hair in tight braids, began its work.

“That’s all I wanted to see,” Cheris said. “I’ll join you at high table in 3.2 hours.”

“Of course.”

Cheris declined Nerevor’s offer to escort her to quarters. Instead, she followed a trio of birdform servitors who took turns leading and whistling cheerful tunes. Cheris missed the servitors she had known on the Burning Leaf , but perhaps the ones here would be amenable to the occasional friendly chat.

Her quarters were staggering in size and luxurious to boot. She could have held a party if she cared to. But there was no time to gawk at the furnishings. She webbed herself into the couch for mothdrive transition.

“I’ll be glad to get underway,” Cheris said.

“Everyone says that,” Jedao said, “but then the killing begins.”

“Better action than nothing. The siege has to be fought.”

“That I won’t dispute.”

In two ten-weeks they would close on the Fortress. Cheris told herself to be calm. A lot could happen in that time, and when the shooting started, she would probably be so busy that boredom would look good. She closed her eyes and thought of yellow eyes, unblinking, and what they might see in the space between stars.

Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis

Priority:Normal

From:: Vahenz afrir dai Noum

To:Heptarch Liozh Zai

Calendrical Minutiae:Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Chicken, Day of the Rooster. Why both chicken and rooster? Who knows. I’ll ask during the next vote.

In the meantime, Zai, you really must reconsider that ascetic diet of yours. That alarmingly excellent confectionary has come up with a whole new flaky pastry with alternating layers of jujube filling and lemon custard, and I shudder to think what the fillings are going for these days considering what they’re charging for the pastries. I have been very good about rationing myself to one a day.

You wanted my take on Scan’s reports, so here goes. Analysis of the long-range readings confirms we’ve got an incoming Kel swarm. There are one or two cindermoths in the lead, impossible to conceal them entirely, and ignore the fact that Scan is equivocating on the formants, I’d bet on two. I would estimate a dozen bannermoths and maybe some miscellaneous transports, but their formation has been chosen to obscure scan readings and it’s going to be impossible to get an exact count until they’re closer.

What interests me more is their choice of general. Luckily, this is the Kel, so most of the options are in our favor. I could tell you were losing patience during all the old tedious debates, and who could blame you, Stoghan won’t shut up when he has an opinion to drone on about, so I’ll sum up the possibilities as they stand. The most dangerous full general who might be available is Kel Cherkad, who’s served with the Andan. I’ve never liked her emblem – I swear that bizarre spiral pattern gives me migraines – but there’s no denying her effectiveness. The next worst prospect would be Lieutenant General Kel Daristu, who’s still young enough to be open-minded about assessing the political situation. However, based on the last reports before the communications blackout, I judge that Kel Command is unlikely to pull him off the Ivenua border. We’re just lucky the scariest one, Kel Inesser, is on the other side of the hexarchate.

I’ve attached the file with my detailed breakdowns of the options, but this is just killing time until we see what banner the Kel broadcast so we know who we’re dealing with. There’s an outside chance they’ll composite their general with a Shuos higher-up, but I can’t imagine the Kel would admit to that kind of desperation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to talk to some of the people responsible for maintaining the new exotics. They’ve been delinquent in turning in performance reports and I find that sort of laziness unacceptable. You know how to reach me if there are any new developments.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Vh.

THE TWO TEN-WEEKS passed more quickly than Cheris had reckoned on. Her first experience at high table was awkward. People tended to talk to her shadow rather than her face. Kel Nerevor didn’t do this, but instead made cheerful remarks that played up her experience and Cheris’s lack thereof.

Cheris had thought that she had recovered the ability to use chopsticks without fumbling them, but nerves made her drop them on the floor. A deltaform servitor brought her a new pair, and she thanked it, grateful that her voice didn’t shake. The deltaform chirped and bobbed before it returned to its duties.

“I’ve noticed your affinity for the servitors, General,” Nerevor said toward the end of the meal.

Cheris considered her response. “I like to think of them as allies,” she said. She hadn’t had much time to talk to the ones on the Unspoken Law , mostly because there was far more paperwork involved in being a general than she had realized.

“Never too many of those,” Nerevor said, but she clearly thought Cheris was eccentric.

Afterward, she reviewed available information on the Fortress of Scattered Needles, singling out the six wards and their associated factions for attention. The Andan, Shuos, and Rahal were represented by the Drummers’ Ward, Dragonfly Ward, and Anemone Ward; the Vidona, Kel, and Nirai were represented by the Ribbon Ward, Radiant Ward, and Umbrella Ward. She still didn’t like the fact that all the wards’ communication posts had been taken over simultaneously. Then she tried to make a dent in her paperwork.

“You should take a break,” Jedao said while she was in the middle of parsing a particularly disorganized report on Medical’s preparedness. “Isn’t there something you do to relax?”

“I should –”

“Trust me, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to work yourself to death later. Do something fun while you can.”

Cheris was dubious, but she invited some servitors to join her for a drama. A deltaform and a mothform came by, and they exchanged friendly greetings while the drama began playing. The mothform lit up in ebullient golds, magentas, and oranges every time the heroine’s sidekick, who was supposedly a Nirai, wrote so-called equations.

For her part, Cheris quizzed the deltaform about its opinion of the cindermoth’s Kel, especially Commander Nerevor. Maybe it was underhanded to turn to a servitor for intelligence, especially since most people didn’t take notice of them even when they were right under their noses, but she needed all the help she could get. As a captain she’d been able to associate with her lieutenants and the other infantry captains and listen in on a little gossip. Here, the greater difference in rank, to say nothing of Jedao, made it impossible to talk to people in the same way.