Ninefox Gambit (28 page)

“The Hafn have been quiescent for decades,” Cheris said. “Wasn’t there an Andan cultural exchange just two years ago?”

“The fact that the Hafn got along with the Andan should have tipped us off. Everyone thinks of the Shuos as the sneaky snailfuckers, but the Andan are so damn affable and charming and fun to be around up to the point where they stab you in the kidneys.

“Anyway, General Cheris, you should have been informed ages ago. The fact that Kel Command chose to keep you in the dark says they’re afraid you’ll turn coat. Word is there’s a Shuos in one of the subcommand composites. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s fouling up their judgment.”

“Hexarch Mikodez,” Jedao said, very softly.

“What do you expect me to do with this information?” Cheris asked, swallowing a “sir.”

“Terrible, isn’t it? I’m not supposed to talk to you, and with your brevet you outrank me. If you ask my
advice
, I’d say take the Fortress of Scattered Needles as fast as you can. The calendrical fingerprints will affect us in the contested sector, and the Hafn will want the nexus for themselves. If we fail, General, blow the thing to atoms. Deny it to the Hafn. – Can I have a word with General Jedao? Is he in there somewhere?”

Of course. Marish couldn’t currently see Cheris’s shadow. The angle was wrong, and people outside her swarm didn’t know how anchoring worked. Changing the lights only took a moment. Marish’s eyes flickered as she took the ninefox shadow in.

“I speak for General Shuos Jedao,” Cheris said, “and he can hear you fine.”

“General Jedao,” Marish said.

“I’m listening,” Jedao said with frank interest. Cheris repeated the words.

“I’m a Kel, sir, but I have a brain to think with,” Marish said. “The hexarchate has gone curdled. They should have decided whether to trust you and the brevet from the start, all in or all out, none of this insipid indecisive shit.

“I’m sworn to Kel Command and I’m due to fight soon and very likely die. I imagine your brevet is constrained by formation instinct. But you, sir – you’re out of the cradle so it’s too late not to trust you, and formation instinct is before your time even if you weren’t a Shuos. All in or all out. You won’t scruple over what needs doing. Fix what has to be fixed in the hexarchate, sir. You’re the weapon we have left. Brigadier General Marish out.”

“I knew things were bad,” Jedao said after that, “but I hadn’t realized just how bad. Cheris, Kel Command and I have a” – wry pause – “complicated relationship. However, in times past they have recognized that I need a certain minimum of information to be able to operate on their behalf. Now it seems that they’re hanging us out to dry. I can’t help but think that Shuos oversight has to do with it, given how much my hexarch considers me a mismanaged resource.

“Still, something’s changed since they sent us forth. It’s as if they think we’re going to take the Fortress and use it against them, although I can’t imagine how they think I’m going to escape an entire swarm of Kel. This entire siege has turned into a loyalty test.”

“Then why not recall us?” Cheris said.

“Because we’re here. They’ve already written us off. If we get the job done, then great. Otherwise, they undoubtedly have some backup plan already in motion. I would give a lot to be eavesdropping on the hivemind right now.” His voice quieted. “I don’t think our exchange with General Marish is going to help us. Or her, for that matter.”

“She wouldn’t care,” Cheris said, thinking about Kel Marish’s reputation. “She thinks she’s going to her death.”

“That’s the trouble with the best suicide hawks,” Jedao said softly, “you burn out so quickly.”

Cheris was already out the door and heading for the command center. She was shaken by Marish’s directness, but she couldn’t unknow what she’d been told. All that remained was to make the best use of the information that she could, and try not to think about how Kel Command might punish Marish if she survived.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Fortress of Scattered Needles, Analysis

Priority:
High

From:
: Vahenz afrir dai Noum

To:
Heptarch Liozh Zai

Calendrical Minutiae:
Year of the Fatted Cow, Month of the Peahen, Day of the Onager, Hour of the Greenback Beetle. Dare I ask what agricultural role the beetle fulfills? Farming isn’t my strong suit and the grid’s article on the topic was stultifyingly boring.

I realize you’ve seen three other reports from me in as many hours, but make time for this one, my dear Zai. It’s about our favorite general: Stoghan.

I can see you raising your eyebrows already. Truly, Zai, you must learn to concentrate on the long view. The benefits that Stoghan’s connections bring you won’t last. The Hafn, on the other hand, have the clout to make your vision a reality.

Anyway, Stoghan. Don’t yell when you read this, you know it upsets your assistant, but I’ve been having Stoghan followed. I was curious as to whether his Andan-certified courtesan was a loyalist spy, but the man is clean.

My agent wasn’t able to follow all the way in due to Stoghan’s guards, but it appears Stoghan’s been keeping a prisoner to himself. The agent believes the prisoner is a Kel.

We agreed that there would be no private prisoners, playthings, whatever. Torture to cement the remembrance days is an unfortunate necessity of the calendar, but it’s overseen by a legitimate government. If regular citizens are desperate to try their hand at Vidona-style frolics, that’s what simulators are for. Analysis One was to oversee all captives. I don’t want a repeat of the interference that scratched out Kel Nerevor just when the technicians were starting to ease her out of fledge-null.

You have more bad news, I’m afraid. Gerenag Abrana has decided that Ching Dze is a threat to her. You’d think keeping her factories safe from Shuos saboteurs would give her enough to do. Ordinarily I would be entertained, but she’s been opening holes in security to allow the Shuos to hit Ching Dze’s calibration populations, and the Shuos have noticed.

Remember: Stoghan is expendable. You can find some other popular soldier to promote to his position. But you can’t afford to have Abrana and your chief propagandist feuding. It would be one thing if you were weakening both parties on purpose, but right now the priority is simply to hold the Fortress.

I see that Jedao’s been probing the extent of the corrosion gradient, which has been holding the Kel fast. I wish our setup took less time – you could always nag Abrana about production quotas – but soon we’ll be able to punish our opponent’s unusual passivity. At times I honestly think he believes the Shuos will win this for him, when the Shuos despise him.

I need to catch up on sleep, but I made my assistant promise to wake me up when the shooting begins. You think I’m bloodthirsty, but I do adore a good one-sided slaughter. It would be tempting to get involved in some of the fieldwork if I weren’t too important to risk.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Vh.

C
HERIS ORDINARILY FORGOT
her dreams, but this time she woke with a memory of a festival her parents had taken her to when she was eleven. A lot of adults had insisted on talking to her in Mwen-dal instead of the high language, and she had tried not to be too sullen in her answers. In the dream, however, each time she spoke to someone, they turned into a raven and flew away.

She ran after the ravens and into the woods. The ravens alighted on a carcass. One was pecking at its eye. It might have been a dog or a jackal.

She was certain it was a fox.

Afterward, she walked to the mirror and forced herself to look at Jedao’s reflection. For a panicky moment she couldn’t remember the shape of her eyes. Jedao looked the same as he had when she first saw him, except he was smiling quizzically. He had a very good smile. Perturbed, she brought up her hand and stared at the fingerless glove. The reflection did the same.

“Are you all right?” Jedao said.

“Can you see my dreams?” she demanded.

“No,” Jedao said. “For that matter, I can’t remember what it feels like to dream, or to sleep.”

Cheris had a sleep-muddled desire to ask him about foxes, and scavengers, and dark places in the woods, but just then the terminal informed her that Captain-magistrate Gara wanted to talk to her.

“I’ll take the call,” Cheris said. “Captain.”

“Sir,” Gara said, although she looked at Cheris oddly for a moment, “I’ve had Doctrine running figures on exotic weapons. The data we got from the corrosion gradient helped us pin down some key coefficients.” She sent over some equations. “Look at these three matrices in the chain, sir. Now, this is a preliminary result and we have to run some feasibility tests, but” – a cluster of coefficients turned red – “if we can hammer
this
diagonalization into place, there’s a chance we can modify our threshold winnowers to work.”

I know what those are,
Cheris thought blankly. Everyone did, and everyone knew the old chant:
From every mouth a maw; from every door a death.

People remembered the winnowers because of the use Jedao had made of them at Hellspin Fortress. Even today, Kel Command used them sparingly.

“What are the guidance parameters?” Cheris said, because she had to say something.

“Well, that’s the interesting part, sir,” Gara said, as though they were discussing a vacation spot and not a weapon. “Most winnower variants are full-spectrum death. We might, however, be able to get this one to target heretics selectively.”

“Weapons that attempt to target loyalty-states are better known for fratricide,” Cheris said. It was the subject of a whole category of Kel jokes.

Gara looked at her again, but was undeterred. “At least give us permission to pursue this. If it does pan out, it won’t be much work to modify the winnowers that
Unspoken Law
and
Sincere Greeting
carry.”

“Very well,” Cheris said. “Keep me apprised of your results, but set nothing in motion without my approval.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Cheris shook her head. “Why did Gara keep looking at me strangely?” she asked.

“Cheris,” Jedao said, “can you hear yourself?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my hearing,” she said in confusion.

“Not your hearing. Your accent.”

“Everyone has an accent,” Cheris said, even more confused. Her mother had told her that after she came home crying because some children had made fun of the way she talked. Of course, her mother hadn’t been able to hide the fact that some accents were better than others. By her second year as a cadet, Cheris had conformed her speech to Academy Prime standard.

“Yes,” Jedao said, “but yours has been slipping and it’s particularly bad today. Listen to my speech patterns and then listen to yourself.”

“Are we talking about bleed-through?” Cheris said. “Because if you have anything else to share on that front, I think I deserve to know.”

He was right. She was speaking with his drawl.

“Speech is a physical act,” Jedao said. “It’s probably related to the muscle memory issue. And no, I don’t think there are any more surprises in store for you.”

Well, it wasn’t as if her soldiers didn’t already regard her with suspicion. “Can’t be helped,” she said, more firmly than she felt. Besides, they had more important matters to deal with. “I don’t know about the threshold winnower,” she said, “but if Doctrine can get it to work at all, it would be a valuable asset.”

“You can’t afford to ignore the possibility,” Jedao said. “Even a flawed winnower is one hell of a weapon.” His voice flexed slightly, then steadied.

“How long did it take you to set yours up?” Cheris asked coolly.

“Quite a while, I imagine.”

“If you were there, how can you not know?”

“My memories of the siege are a mess,” Jedao said. “There was very little screaming where I was. They died too fast. I could hear a little over the communications channels that had been left open before the winnower turned everything to static. I spent a full half-hour wandering around the moth trying to figure out why Gized wasn’t answering my calls. I didn’t recognize her with the hole in the side of her head.

“I remember when the Kel arrested me. They should have blown up my command moth with missiles, but they boarded and used tranquilizer clouds instead. Maybe they wanted an identifiable body.

“And then there were the numbers. They told me about all the people who were dead, ours and theirs. But then, war is about taking the future away from people.”

“And you think we should use this weapon?” Cheris said.

“If it works, yes. Dead is dead, Cheris. Do you think it makes any difference whether you’re killed by a knife in the back or a bullet? The important thing is to get the job done.”

“If we can use winnowers,” Cheris said, “they can too.”

“Possible, but unlikely. If they had it, they would have deployed it by now. My guess is they need something about those coefficients in their particular calendar, or maybe they’re having trouble manipulating the appropriate atmospherics.”

“Jedao,” she said, “how are
we
supposed to shift the calendricals to get this to work? A focused change would do it, but we only have a toehold down there. We can’t even deploy field grids. My people aren’t known for their persuasion skills, and there aren’t enough Shuos.”