Ninefox Gambit

THE SIEGE OF Hellspin Fortress. The fire-flashes of alerts, blood on the walls and floor and terminals, ricochet marks. A dropped stylus. Cheris could see where it had been chewed on the end. A fallen woman with gray in her hair and a bullet hole in the side of her head, blood puddled on the floor. She tried to think of the woman’s name, she should know this, but it wouldn’t come to her.

Gwe Pia was sprawled next to Jiang. She heard orders over the communications links, a desperate query from Commander Kel Menowen of Tactical Eight, then static. No one knew what was going on. A few people had tried to reassert order, the ones she had predicted would have the presence of mind to do so. But the bombs and logic grenades had taken care of them. Her habit of thorough inspections had made it easy to plant things. With the addition of the threshold winnowers, the Kel siege force was truly broken.

She had expected her hands to be sweating inside her gloves, but they were dry. Calm.

There was a lot of blood. She had not cared for neatness, only efficiency. She had one bullet left over, as she had calculated, and if necessary she could have taken weapons from the dead. They hadn’t so much as clipped her. She had always been fast, and she knew the value of a good ambush.

It had been the weakest part of the plan. Atrocious setup: from a tactical standpoint, it would have made more sense to frame a subset of her staff as the traitors, and turn her people against each other. Easier to finish them off that way.

The problem was, she hadn’t wanted to win.

Cheris turned the gun around in her hand. It was her Patterner 52, a model known for its accuracy. It was engraved on the grip with her personal emblem, the Deuce of Gears. She hadn’t wanted to do it – it felt vainglorious – but it would have raised eyebrows if she hadn’t. The Kel expected their generals to have healthy egos. The metal was still warm, at the exact temperature she expected.

She eased the muzzle of the gun into her mouth. It tasted the way metal should taste. She felt nothing. Not relief, not guilt, not triumph. Everything had gone more or less as she had planned. No one had risen to stop her, to tell her she was wrong, to say there was a better way of fighting the heptarchs. But then, the only one who had known about her rebellion was a heptarch himself. Years with the Kel, sharing the cup, and they had never figured it out.

Her finger tightened fractionally on the trigger. Surely the split second of heat and pain would be better than this roaring emptiness.

I am a coward, she thought, lowering the gun. What she had done was unforgivable. But to do it for no purpose was even worse. She couldn’t quit now.