Ninefox Gambit

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CAPTAIN-ENGINEER NIRAI WENIAT might have been the only person in the swarm who liked threshold winnowers. It wasn’t that he thought their destructiveness was funny, although people had accused him of thinking destruction in general was funny. It was the purity of the winnowers’ function: death that caused death that caused death.

The universe ran on death. All the clockwork wonders in the world couldn’t halt entropy. You could work with death or you could let it happen; that was all.

“Sir,” said Nervous Engineer Three, “I’m having trouble getting the – oh, there it goes.” A soft click.

“Have more confidence,” Weniat said. This had the opposite of the desired effect.

They were setting up in a park in the Radiant Ward. A bunch of Kel had flushed out the civilians, heroically refrained from shooting the tame deer that begged them for treats, and were now patrolling the perimeter to make sure no nasty surprises turned up.

Fighting was still going on elsewhere in the ward. One of the infantry captains Weniat was on friendly terms with had passed him word of the Kel-servitor suicide formations. Weniat had been impressed. Clever use of servitors, high time a Kel thought laterally. When he had heard they were going to be commanded by a jumped-up captain no one had ever heard of, he’d thought Kel Command had gone mad, but it seemed the woman had potential after all.

The park was too quiet. Nervous Engineer Two was glancing around. One of the deer wandered over and had to be shooed off. It seemed to think the winnower might dispense treats.

“It’s ready, sir,” said Steady Engineer, who had been working quietly all this time.

The winnower didn’t look like its function. If you didn’t realize what it was, you might mistake it for a pretty kinetic sculpture, all looping wires and spinning wheels and interconnected shafts. Weniat, who had understood the relevant mechanics since he was thirteen years old, knew better.

“It’s Weniat,” he said over the link. “Teams Two through Four, status.”

“Team Two preparations complete.”

“Team Four here. Estimate another sixteen minutes, we’re having a minor issue with the – look, you’re holding it upside-down. Let me –” Silence.

“Team Three, sir, we’re ready.”

Team Four figured out what they were doing in thirty-eight minutes. Two of its members were borderline incompetent, but they were under an especially vigilant lieutenant.

“Weniat to Colonel Ragath,” he said once he had confirmed that nothing had come unscrewed at the last second. “All winnowers deployed. I recommend you get the Kel the fuck out of here.”

“Captain,” Ragath’s long-suffering voice came back, “one of these days I’ll figure out why the Nirai can recite transcendental numbers to hundreds of digits while drunk out of their minds, but can’t remember their own ranks.”

Weniat was impressed that the colonel knew about transcendental numbers. He must stop underestimating the Kel.

“Do you wish to evacuate any personnel, Captain?”

“No, sir,” Weniat said. Everyone here was a volunteer. The Nirai could make informed judgments on this better than the Kel could. It was their job to understand the math.

“Very well,” Ragath said. “Once the heretics notice we’re pulling out, things will go to hell fast. I’ll keep you informed of the situation.”

“Are we winning, sir?”

Slight pause. “You could call it that. Colonel Ragath out.”

Time passed.

More time passed.

The deer wandered by again. Nervous Engineer Three threw rocks at it until it went away.

“How long does it take the Kel to shoot their way out, anyway?” Nervous Engineer Five, who tended to whine.

“Key phrase,” Steady Engineer said, “shoot their way out. I’ve seen you with a gun, you think you could do better?”

“I hear something,” Nervous Engineer Four said in an undertone. People crashing through the park, twigs snapping. They weren’t here to pet the deer.

“Weniat to Colonel Ragath,” Weniat said urgently. “Complication. Patrol approaching our position. Not sure how many.”

There were only five people in each winnower team.

“I’ve got three slow Kel companies,” Ragath said after a moment. “However, your mission has priority. Trigger the winnowers when you see fit.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do your job, Captain. Colonel Ragath out.”

The noises were getting closer. Voices calling out to each other.

“Weniat to all teams.” He was shivering with mixed dread and anticipation. “Activate all winnowers.”

Weniat and his team were standing in the winnower’s shelter zone. All modern winnowers provided a shelter zone for their teams. It was anyone’s guess as to whether this model’s would work as specified.

The first winnowers hadn’t had shelter zones at all.

The winnower made sounds like a furnace exploding, like wineglasses singing shattered, like bells slamming from side to side. It didn’t give off light, but spewed the kind of wind you would get if you twisted a world’s worth of clouds into a spindle and let go after a hundred years.

The shelter zone was working, indicated by a faint lambent glow. The question was whether the winnower itself was having any effect. Here in the park, amid the trees’ long shadows, it was hard to tell.

Wait. There was a whisper. A knot in a tree was opening into a cracked eye. A strange blemished radiation glared from it.

The deer had wandered back toward the noise. The winnower clattered, and it reared up. Light bled from the deer’s eyes, the color of scars and unwhole moons. It staggered a few steps before falling. Curved gashes opened in its throat and flanks, from which tiny teeth gleamed, and there were snapping noises. There was something comical about the angles the deer’s legs made.

Round shapes boiled out of the gashes. Eyes. All of the eyes were looking at the winnower.

They were in the shelter zone. They were safe.

Weniat had been holding his breath. “Weniat to all winnower teams. Status.”

“We hit some birds, sir.” Team Four. “There’s a residential complex barely visible from our position. Hard to be certain, but it looks like – yes, there we go. A plague of light.”

Team Three: “I’m sorry, sir, ours is producing the safety zone but is otherwise nonoperational. We’d attempt a repair, but it’s impossible to reach the affected components without leaving the zone.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Weniat said. “You’ll soon be in danger from the other winnowers. I’d prefer we all get out intact.”

Four winnowers was overkill even for a ward. One would have been fine. The others had been in case of the inevitable malfunction.

Team Two was clinical as always. “All systems functioning within parameters, sir.”

“Weniat to Colonel Ragath. Three winnowers operational, sir. We don’t have a good way of gauging what ‘operational’ means in this –”

“They’re working,” Ragath said flatly. “Captain Jaghun set up video for us before the radiation caught up to her company. Captain Iziade was within eyeshot of the passage out, but I’d had it sealed. The heretics caught on fast. They’ve already locked down everything else; we’re cooperating to contain the damage. Scan’s shot to hell with the winnowers active, but you may be the only people left alive down there.”

The ward’s population had been estimated at 43,000 people. It wasn’t that the number was high. It wasn’t. Weniat knew what large numbers looked like. It was the ratio. Everyone dead.

At least it would have been quick. Not painless, but quick. Of course, to say that cleaning up all the corpses was going to be a hassle was an understatement. Not his problem, luckily.

Weniat, in a rare exercise, recovered enough humanity to say, “I’m sorry about your soldiers, sir.”

Ragath ignored this. “Leave the winnowers running for another hour just in case, then shut them off. We’ll retrieve you, but in case of some disaster on our end you know what to do.”

Destroy the winnowers. They couldn’t be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

“One of these days you’ll tell me to do something hard, sir,” Weniat said.

“Go fuck a power socket, Captain,” Ragath said without heat, and signed off.

“YOU’RE CERTAIN?” CHERIS asked Colonel Ragath. “We’re having the expected problems with Scan up here.”

“We’re certain,” Ragath said. “We’re extracting the winnower teams now. Nothing left but fungus and corpses. Thanks to Captain Jaghun, we even have a video of some creative but misguided soldier’s attempt to survive by pulling her eyes out with her fingers. Didn’t work, of course.”

Neither of them mentioned the fact that the winnowers hadn’t respected loyalty-states. Ragath had reported the destruction of three Kel companies earlier. There was nothing more to say about it.

“Thank you for your work, Colonel, and my regards to the winnower teams,” Cheris said. “Keep me informed of further developments.”

“Naturally, sir.”

“He approves of you,” Jedao said.

“I couldn’t tell,” Cheris said. Out loud: “Still no luck, Scan?”

“We’re not likely to get readings on that hemisphere for another four hours, sir.”

“All that,” Cheris said subvocally, “and it wasn’t even the main assault. We depopulated a ward as a distraction.” At least the heretic Gerenag Abrana, whose holdings and supporters had been concentrated in the Radiant Ward, would be sure to take notice.

“The best feints,” Jedao said, “look like real attacks.”

During the winnower attack, Shuos infiltrators in other wards had been busy with sabotage. A lot of sabotage, carefully targeted.

Out loud again: “Get me Captain Damiod and Captain Ko.” The cryptology team and the Shuos. Their faces appeared next to her primary display.

“Sir,” Ko said, saluting.

“Sir,” Damiod said. “You wanted to hear about that line.”

“Yes,” Cheris said. He had brought it to her attention not long ago.

“With aid from the infiltrators, we’ve confirmed that Line 92832-17 goes directly to the Fortress’s command center. It’s probably Inaiga Zai’s direct line. We haven’t had any luck decrypting the packets. I suspect there’s some cutting-edge theorem being used because the structures smell funny, but never mind that.

“More to the point, we’ve confirmed that the tap on 17 goes to an individual associated with Zai’s lieutenant Gerenag Abrana. Unless the Shuos have gotten bored, no one’s tampered with the tap. We think Zai doesn’t realize it’s there.”

“Do you concur?” Cheris asked Ko.

“I do, sir,” Ko said.

“I’m sorry not to have better news for you,” Damiod said, although he sounded as though what he was really sorry about was this demand on his time.

“It’s all right,” Cheris said, and took note of Ko’s eyes, momentarily narrowed. “That’s not what I need. You’ve prepared that dummy cipher for me?”

“It’s ready,” Ko said. “It looks like a hedgehog, but a good team should be able to crack it in days if they approach it the right way, especially with the Fortress’s computational resources.”

Cheris was betting that Gerenag Abrana had an excellent team.

“Then here’s the next thing,” Cheris said. “Can we insert a message into Line 17? And make sure the tap sees it?”

“It’s an excellent tap,” Damiod said scornfully. “It probably sees more than the main line does. But sir, once you do that, they’ll be able to run a trace. You’ll blow our ability to listen in.”

“That’s fine,” Cheris said. “After this message we may not need to listen any longer.”

Ko was thoughtful. “How very Shuos of you, sir.”

“Do you have an objection?” Cheris said.

“It was merely an observation, sir.”

“This is the message I want inserted,” Cheris said to Ko and Damiod, “by whatever means necessary. Full video, show the shadow. Open with the Deuce of Gears.” Jedao had insisted on this. “This is Garach Jedao Shkan, forgive the cosmetic changes; my options were limited.” The name sounded unnaturally natural. “As per your request, I’ve cleared out the pests in your house. If you take care of your end, you should have a free hand to negotiate once the Hafn arrive. Meanwhile, I have some Kel to attend to. I trust we can discuss further arrangements over dinner as previously agreed. Enjoy the peace and quiet.”

If this worked, if Zai’s lieutenant cracked the dummy cipher and overheard Zai’s “negotiations” with Jedao to get rid of Zai’s subordinates, the heretics would tear each other apart and they could all go home soon.

Cheris looked down at her half-gloved hands so she wouldn’t have to notice the way people were looking at her.

“That’s it,” Jedao said. “Now we wait.”