Ninefox Gambit

CHERIS COMPOSED A report to Kel Command. Just the notes made her wince. Vidona Diaiya’s fungal canister. The pervasive use of heretical formations. The threshold winnowers. She made Jedao look over it four times before she sent it along with her request for Andan or Vidona backup, both for preference. The Kel weren’t suited to conversions, and there weren’t enough Shuos to go around.

“Oh, that reminds me – you should go into detail on all the computations you did for the heretical formations and the calendrical spike,” Jedao said just as she was about to send it. “Kel Command might not care about the derivations, but the Rahal like that sort of thing. Put them in a good mood for whatever renormalization they need to do on the Fortress. Plus, you can impress them with your mathematical skills.”

“Is this some new trick?” Cheris said. All she wanted was for the mission to be over.

“What, by throwing math I don’t understand at people I’ve never met?”

It was true that the Rahal might find some of that information helpful, at that. Besides, she didn’t want to get into an argument about something so trivial.

The day after that conversation, Znev Stoghan’s body turned up in neat pieces in the middle of the amputation guns’ original kill zone. A gene scanner confirmed his identity. No one claimed responsibility. Cheris declined to inquire into the matter.

No one ever found Commander Kel Nerevor. But Cheris kept hoping.

Over the next several days, while Cheris struggled to keep up with the administration of the Fortress, calendrical values continued to normalize at a maddeningly slow rate. Rahal Gara and the other Doctrine officers spent a lot of time muttering to each other.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Cheris said to Jedao.

“I don’t get tired, so there’s no need to relax,” he said. “But I wonder what it is they’re so worried about.”

She didn’t think anything of it until two days later, when Communications and Scan spoke at once.

“Relief swarm, four bannermoths escorting twelve boxmoths—”

“We’re being hailed—”

Cheris’s heart leapt. Kel Command hadn’t forgotten them after all. She was going to be done with the whole wretched situation. “Accept communications,” she said.

“Cheris.” Jedao was trying to get her attention. “Rahal Gara sent a signal you didn’t authorize. I don’t know what she said, and I’ve never seen that override before.”

But she was too giddy with relief to hear him. She didn’t recognize the man whose face appeared on her display, with his dark, steady eyes, but given the number of bannermoth commanders in the hexarchate, there was no reason she should. “This is Commander Kel Huan of the Coiled Stone,” the man said. “I assume I’m addressing Brevet General Kel Cheris and General Shuos Jedao.”

“Fuck,” Jedao said, which wasn’t the response Cheris had expected from him. “Look at the pulse in his neck, Cheris. Something’s wrong.”

“This is Brevet General Kel Cheris,” Cheris said over Jedao’s voice. But she was starting to worry. “I assume you’re here to assist with the conversion of the Fortress.”

“We’ll take care of you, sir,” Huan said. “Just hang tight. – One moment, I’ve got a ridiculous emergency in Engineering to attend to. I need to yell at my Nirai again. My apologies.” He signed off.

“He’s lying,” Jedao said. “Short-term you’ll save more people firing on Huan—”

Cheris remembered what she had learned from Jedao’s sacrifice of Nerevor. No shouting. “I’m not firing on other Kel,” she said coldly. Let alone the relief swarm, of all people. “How are four bannermoths going to take down two cindermoths, to say nothing of the rest of our swarm?”

Scan again. “Formation break! Sincere Greeting has left the secondary pivot.”

Her heart froze. “Get me Commander Paizan. I need an explanation.”

“Waste of time,” Jedao said. Now he sounded calm. “He’ll have been warned. You’re fucked. If you want to preserve your swarm, you have to open fire. But then you’ll be outcast forever, to say nothing of the odds. If you let them bomb you, your swarm will die, but you might live.”

Cheris glanced at the display: the relief swarm was closing rapidly, and was well within erasure cannon range. Her hand had reached the chrysalis gun at her hip when Jedao spoke again. “I don’t advise that,” he said. “I’m your only hope of survival if they hit you with exotics. One survivor is better than none.” His voice cracked suddenly. “I fucked up. Four hundred years trying to put it right and it all goes up in smoke because they decide massive overkill is the best way to execute me. Six to one it’s not Mikodez after all, it’s Kujen. He miscalculated anchoring me to you.”

Mikodez was the Shuos hexarch, but who on earth was Kujen? And why was she a mistake?

Slight pause. “I wasn’t crazy when I killed everyone at Hellspin Fortress,” Jedao said rapidly. “Nirai-zho has the answers, Nirai Kujen, the black cradle’s master, but don’t ever, ever trust him.”

Panic frothed up in her. How was a random faraway Nirai technician germane to the situation? Jedao had picked one hell of a time to make himself a distraction. This was it, he had gone mad, he was going to betray her –

“Sir!” Scan sounded frantic. “Something’s wrong with the Coiled Stone’s engine harmonics. That’s – I think that’s a bomb.”

The only thing worse than Jedao being crazy was Jedao not being crazy. “All units into formation Rising Tiger,” Cheris said, but she knew it was too late. “Open fire on Coiled Stone.”

“One last throw of the dice,” Jedao was saying. “I taught you what I could. Don’t make my mistakes. Goodbye, General. And – and thank you for the light.”

Moments later, the world came apart in a roar of needles and bright, hard angles, and there was no more room in her head for questions, or words, or any scrap of feeling.