Yoon Lee - Ninefox Gambit

The office was located far to the back, with additional security in the way. It would have been nice to go in and do the job personally, but Haodan wasn’t suicidal.

“I’ll make sure it gets to her,” the assistant said with a wan smile.

“Rough day?” Haodan said, placing the parcel on her desk.

“You have no idea. And now this terminal.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you with that,” Haodan lied. His orders had been specific: assassination, not intelligence-fishing. Besides, the target would have seen through the tired “I’m here to fix that hardware glitch” routine. Her weaknesses were gustatory, so Haodan had tailored his approach accordingly.

“Oh, you’re always a help,” the assistant said, smiling more genuinely. “She loves those sweets. They’ll put her in a good mood, all the better for the rest of us.”

“That’s good to hear,” Haodan said. This was a weakness in the plan. If the target kept to schedule, she’d be in the office in approximately twenty-seven minutes. He had set the timer accordingly. There was a strong chance the bomb would kill the assistant, too. Haodan was sorry about this, as he had grown to like her, but contriving a way to keep her safe would have elevated the risk to unacceptable levels.

The assistant went back to wrestling with her terminal. “I’d best be going,” Haodan said. She said something indistinct in response.

Down to the ground floor, back to the scooter. Haodan had no intention of returning to the confectionary now that the job had served its purpose, but he might as well finish the day’s deliveries. It only seemed fair.

Seven minutes after Haodan left, a round-faced man in white-and-gold entered the fourth floor office suite and rapped on the wall.

“Pioro,” the assistant said, “she’s not in yet –”

“She won’t be for some time,” Pioro said. “Emergency meeting, need-to-know, all of that. I’m on the way myself, but I remembered she’s always bitchy if she misses the sweets, especially since Zai’s taken to serving vegetable rolls with fish sauce lately, so I thought I’d stop by to pick them up. Don’t worry, I’ll save you a couple.”

“Yes, that would be good,” the assistant said. “I don’t suppose you have time to look at this synchronization error –”

Pioro’s eyebrows shot up as he leaned over to glance at the display. “Probably some Shuos grid diver. Bad sign if they’re this far in. I ought to run, but you should lock down and restore to clean state. It’s a pain, but we have to take precautions.” He hefted the parcel. “Must be something good in there. Fortunately, she likes to share.”

“Thanks for your help, Pioro,” the assistant said.

“Anytime,” Pioro said as he left with the parcel and its tasteful paper decorations.

THE FIRST THING Vahenz afrir dai Noum did when she cracked General Jedao’s message was start the self-destruct in her remote office. She knew how much that equipment had cost, and how irritated her employers would be, but you could always buy new equipment. She, on the other hand, would be hard to replace. They’d already gotten Pioro with an attack clearly meant for her; she wasn’t about to let them get her too. A pity about the associated casualties, but she didn’t excel at her job by being sentimental.

(Interesting that Jedao had fetched up in a woman’s body, but then, the Shuos didn’t care about that sort of thing. She would have expected it to give the Kel fits, though. Maybe the mere fact of Jedao’s presence made them twitch so much that the issue of the body didn’t even register.)

The second thing Vahenz did was head for the command center to meet Liozh Zai. The Liozh name was an affectation, but it defined Zai. One of the things she liked about Zai was her radiant sincerity, even if it seemed to come hooked into lamentably ascetic tastes in food and drink; Vahenz had always made a point of bringing her own snacks to Zai’s meetings rather than being stuck eating things like sour fruits and unsweetened tea. Trivial points of law mattered to Zai, but because she believed in them, other people believed in them, too. If she’d had more time to season Zai to the grubby realities of politics, Vahenz could have done more with that nascent charisma. But then, what could you expect from someone who had grown up in a glorified warriors’ guild? Zai had been deeply wounded when the hexarchs stripped her of her post as a shield operator for protesting the hexarchs’ calendrical experiments, but that had made Zai into a resource.

Vahenz hoped that Gerenag Abrana’s cryptologists were slower than she was, that her specialized code and superior intelligence gave her the necessary edge. It was her fault for not spotting the tap earlier. She hadn’t realized how good Abrana’s security people were. But once she saw Jedao’s message, she knew the tap had to exist. She had broken the encryption too easily; it was meant to be spied on. And she knew Zai, knew Zai hadn’t been engaged in secret negotiations with the fucking ninefox general. Which meant that the message’s intended recipient was Abrana, or Stoghan, or anyone with a grudge. People who would believe the lie because they half-believed it already.

The recent spate of sabotage and assassinations hadn’t helped. Most victims had been lower-level followers, but people were rattled, and rattled people didn’t think clearly. Everything had targeted Zai’s lieutenants but not Zai herself. They hadn’t found logic spikes or mazes in Zai’s grid systems not because they had been better hidden, but because there had been nothing to find, a fact that Abrana’s people would have noted.

The passages to the command center were dimly lit, familiar. The security systems and guards knew her, and made no complaint as she passed through the outer defenses and the empty shield operator stations, and went into the inner sanctum. She ought to write up a critique of security procedures, but it would be wasted on these fools.

“I want a private conversation,” Vahenz said as she entered. “It will only take an hour.”

Liozh Zai got up to greet her. Even though she had to have gotten as little sleep as Vahenz had, she looked composed, almost regal. “Of course,” she said, formal as always. “Given the situation, we have a lot to discuss.” She turned to set the sanctum’s security mode.

“There won’t be any discussions,” Vahenz said. Her scorch pistol was already in her hand.

Zai understood her immediately and spun, reaching for her own sidearm, but Vahenz was faster. The scorch bolt caught Zai in the side of the head.

Zai fell heavily. Vahenz hated the reek of charred meat and singed hair, but Zai was of no more use, and the less she could tell people about Vahenz, the better.

Vahenz knelt, then, and rearranged the corpse to a better pretense of dignity. It was the least she could do. Besides, she had to concede that Zai had had excellent taste in tailors, pearl-and-gold buttons and pale silk and perfect curves and all. Shame to let that go to waste even in death.

She left as she had come, without a fuss. People trusted her and didn’t even think to ask why the meeting had been so short. Terrible to have a mission go this badly, but she’d warned the Hafn it would be a toss of the dice from the get-go. What she regretted most was Pioro’s death. It was so hard to find decent conversationalists. The universe was a big place, though. She was sure to turn up more dinner partners if she kept looking.

Besides, she was going to have a bothersome report to make to the Hafn once she made it off the Fortress. It appeared Kel Command wasn’t completely misguided in fielding Jedao, or at least, Kel Command and Jedao were using each other in a beautiful dysfunctional ballet. It was irritating that Jedao had fouled her mission, to say the least, but she could appreciate a capable fellow operator when she encountered one.