Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

I doubt even Jedao could finesse his way past the shields, whatever our opponent’s recent boast, so it’ll be interesting to see what transpires in the next four days. In the meantime, I had these delightful bonbons delivered from that confectionary the other day. I realize they’re terrible for me, but what is life without a few indulgences? I sent some over even though I know perfectly well you’re not going to try them. But your assistant likes them and it never hurts to have your staff happy with you.

Before I forget, you should get on Stoghan’s case about holding on to the communications post in the Anemone Ward. Delegation to qualified subordinates and all that, but I don’t care how many supporters he has, his military skills are better on paper than in fact. I wonder if the loyalists are trying to warn Jedao off or to warn the hexarchs about Jedao, but best not to give them a chance to say anything if you can help it.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Vh.

CHERIS WASHED HER hands in hot water, but they wouldn’t stop shaking.

“You’ll be fine,” Jedao said. “Have a drink of water. That always helped me.”

“I hate being so obvious.”

“I almost threw up after my first battle in space. I thought it would be different because the corpses weren’t in front of me. But there’s something terrible about that dry metallic click that indicates a hit. They’ve changed it since then, but for me it’s always that click.”

Jedao added, when Cheris declined to answer, “I’ve seen a lot of young officers through a lot of awful situations. That’s all it is.”

She poured herself a glass of water. It tasted cold and empty. After drinking it, she said, “I had expected you to –” She fumbled for a better way of expressing herself. “Take charge.”

“Why?” Jedao said. “You didn’t fight the way I would have, but that doesn’t matter. You won. I brought relevant items to your attention, but since you were doing your job, it was in everyone’s best interest for me to shut up and stay out of your way. I have watched a lot of junior officers get ruined by their superiors’ refusal to allow them the least bit of autonomy.”

Interesting. Maybe he wouldn’t have been a completely horrible instructor after all. As odd a thought as that was. “You feel strongly about this.”

“There’s no point asking people to risk their lives for you if you aren’t going to trust them in turn. Surely Kel Academy still teaches that.”

Cheris conceded the point. “I have a briefing in two hours,” she said. “You need to tell me about the signifier tests and how we’re getting past the shields. With a time limit, no less.”

“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.