Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

Cheris marked that with a simple acknowledgment and didn’t bother with a more elaborate reply. She blinked, and was standing outside herself again. This time she was in the dueling hall, and Kel Nerevor was saluting her with that fierce yellow calendrical sword. There were at least three things wrong with the scenario, but she didn’t want to leave.

“Cheris,” Jedao said again. “General. Either get some fucking drugs or get out of the fucking command center. Right now you’re a menace to the swarm.”

“It’s 2.9 hours until the operation begins,” Cheris said. Nerevor was trying to tell her something, but she spoke in words of fracture, seizure, cooling ash. Cheris couldn’t decipher the words. “I have to –”

“Cheris, most generals have aides for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. Drugs, sleep, drugged sleep, I don’t care, pick something or I will figure out how to possess you.”

“Commander, I’ll be in my quarters,” Cheris said to Hazan.

“Sir, I’ll call you when the action starts.”

She wouldn’t trust herself to wake up, either. At least he didn’t realize she was lying.

Jedao figured it out straight off. “Cheris,” he said, “you’re being ridiculous.”

When Cheris entered the dueling hall, several people looked at her with wide eyes. After all, she had only come here the one time.

“I hope it’s redundant for me to say this,” Jedao said, “but you shouldn’t duel. You’re apt to slaughter people by accident.”

Her chest hurt. “I suppose that’s to be preferred to killing them on purpose.”

“When you became a soldier, what did you expect it to be about? Parades? Pretty speeches? Admirers?”

“I know it’s about killing,” she snapped. “I didn’t want it to be about deliberately killing my own soldiers .”

“Sometimes there’s no other way.”

The shadow was behind her, so she couldn’t glare at it. “Yes, well,” Cheris said, “you live your beliefs. How commendable.”

“I wasn’t referring specifically to Hellspin Fortress.”

She snorted.

“I am not good for you,” Jedao said. “I know this. But if I were as good at manipulating people as you think I am, you would be taking a nap instead of making all the duelists nervous.”

“You don’t sleep,” Cheris said, remembering. “You don’t sleep at all. What do you do in all that time? Count ravens?”

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.

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.