Ninefox Gambit (18 page)

The true concern here is General Garach Jedao Shkan, Shuos Jedao, the arch-traitor, whatever he’s calling himself these days. Let’s go through the possibilities systematically, shall we? Either he’s who he says he is, or he isn’t.

If he really is Jedao, he could still be lying about why he’s here. You would think that the escape of the hexarchate’s greatest traitor would occasion some kind of uproar, but the hexarchs wouldn’t want to start a mass panic, and the communications blackout makes it hard to tell. It’s barely conceivable he could have blackmailed his way into a Kel swarm.

On the other hand, if this is Jedao, he could be working for the Kel. It’s said he’s been well-behaved for them on past outings, but who knows how true that is. The Kel habit of wiping the memories of people who work with him doesn’t help us, intelligence-wise. Jedao being a Kel pet would explain his possession of a Kel swarm, however, and be consistent with Kel shortsightedness.

My money is on the third possibility, that someone’s using Jedao’s name to scare us. I bet the Kel in that swarm are thrilled about this tactic. Notice how the Kel transmitted a null banner instead of the famed Deuce of Gears: that might have been a compromise. I doubt you could get any hawk in the hexarchate to serve under the Deuce, no matter the importance of the operation. The general is probably someone in disgrace, which is peculiar. This should be a juicy assignment for an ambitious commander, despite the ruse. People would have been fighting over it if the Kel admitted to anything as pedestrian as personal ambition.

Here’s the thing. I’ve been reviewing the combat data from that engagement. The style is completely wrong. Don’t misunderstand me. Our opponent is very competent, and we should be wary of them. But their approach was calculating, cautious. Team Two will argue based on the fungal cocoon that our opponent likes fancy technology, but you’ll notice they abandoned the moth that released it: typical Kel, they don’t like seeing too much initiative.

Anyway, do recall old lessons. General Jedao’s campaigns are a matter of historical record. What stands out is his combination of aggressiveness and an uncanny ability to anticipate the enemy’s thinking. His first battle against the Lanterners was notable because he was outnumbered eight to one and he still inflicted a decisive defeat on them. Thankfully, our opponent is not of that caliber.

I doubt even Jedao could finesse his way past the shields, whatever our opponent’s recent boast, so it’ll be interesting to see what transpires in the next four days. In the meantime, I had these delightful bonbons delivered from that confectionary the other day. I realize they’re terrible for me, but what is life without a few indulgences? I sent some over even though I know perfectly well you’re not going to try them. But your assistant likes them and it never hurts to have your staff happy with you.

Before I forget, you should get on Stoghan’s case about holding on to the communications post in the Anemone Ward. Delegation to qualified subordinates and all that, but I don’t care how many supporters he has, his military skills are better on paper than in fact. I wonder if the loyalists are trying to warn Jedao off or to warn the hexarchs about Jedao, but best not to give them a chance to say anything if you can help it.

Yours in calendrical heresy,

Vh.

C
HERIS WASHED HER
hands in hot water, but they wouldn’t stop shaking.

“You’ll be fine,” Jedao said. “Have a drink of water. That always helped me.”

“I hate being so obvious.”

“I almost threw up after my first battle in space. I thought it would be different because the corpses weren’t in front of me. But there’s something terrible about that dry metallic click that indicates a hit. They’ve changed it since then, but for me it’s always that click.”

Jedao added, when Cheris declined to answer, “I’ve seen a lot of young officers through a lot of awful situations. That’s all it is.”

She poured herself a glass of water. It tasted cold and empty. After drinking it, she said, “I had expected you to –” She fumbled for a better way of expressing herself. “Take charge.”

“Why?” Jedao said. “You didn’t fight the way I would have, but that doesn’t matter. You won. I brought relevant items to your attention, but since you were doing your job, it was in everyone’s best interest for me to shut up and stay out of your way. I have watched a lot of junior officers get ruined by their superiors’ refusal to allow them the least bit of autonomy.”

Interesting. Maybe he wouldn’t have been a completely horrible instructor after all. As odd a thought as that was. “You feel strongly about this.”

“There’s no point asking people to risk their lives for you if you aren’t going to trust them in turn. Surely Kel Academy still teaches that.”

Cheris conceded the point. “I have a briefing in two hours,” she said. “You need to tell me about the signifier tests and how we’re getting past the shields. With a time limit, no less.”

“Yes, that’s fair,” Jedao said. “I know one thing about the Fortress that you don’t, and it’s because I once attended a live-fire demonstration of the shields’ effectiveness. They didn’t explain how the shields worked, but the shields produced artifacts in the human visible spectrum, nowhere else. I’m not a technician, far from it, but I found that curious. Too convenient.”

“I’m not sure how that helps us,” Cheris said. Of course, she wasn’t a technician either.

“If I’m right, the visual chaff is the key to understanding the shield operators. Who are human. The system can’t be grid-controlled – although maybe it can be composite-controlled?”

Cheris was sure the answer was no, but queried Doctrine to double-check. The answer came quickly. They must have figured it out beforehand and it had probably been sitting in some report awaiting her perusal. “No composites in the heretical calendar,” she said.

“So we’re dealing with humans. Think of this as an exercise in decryption. Once we crack the language of symbols, we’ll know how to break the operator and force our way in.”

“Jedao,” Cheris said, “do you have any idea how computationally expensive it is to crack any decent cryptosystem? Even one this old, if it hasn’t been done already?”

“You’re thinking like a Nirai, not a Shuos or Andan. I doubt the shields were designed this way on purpose. My guess is that the chaff is an unavoidable side-effect of the technology, which is why they’re so keen to hush it up.”

After an agonized silence, Cheris said, “I need a demonstration. I can’t take this to our officers. Especially after I’ve asked them to masquerade as traitors. But I don’t see how you can possibly make a demonstration before the fact, either.”

“All right,” Jedao said calmly. “Pick something up, something small, and hold it in your hand, Cheris.”

“What?”

“You asked for a demonstration.”

This was the kind of pointless game that the Shuos were notorious for. One of her colonels had once remarked that a Shuos would never tell you something straight out when they could force you to take an agonizing snaky route to the conclusion by manipulating you with word games. “I don’t see –”

“Do you want the demonstration or not?”

Cheris bit back her first response and went to get her luckstone. She slipped it free of its chain. The stone shone in curves of light interrupted by the raven engraving. “All right,” she said. He had better not be wasting her time.

“You’re going to hold on to that stone,” Jedao said. “Consider that an order, if it helps. I’m going to convince you to let it go before the briefing.”

Cheris was already unimpressed. What was he going to do, arm-wrestle her for it with the arm he didn’t have anymore? “That’s all?” she said. Then, grudgingly: “I see. The stone is the Fortress. My hand is the shields. This won’t work, Jedao. Even if you have some way of making me fail a simple task, I can’t persuade our commanders like this.” She was pretty sure the Kel commanders would have much the same reaction she was having. Except they would be less polite about it.

“Oh, we’re not going to bother with rocks –”

“It’s a luckstone,” she said, more sharply than she had meant to, even if she couldn’t imagine that Jedao knew anything about Mwennin custom. It was her birthday-stone, a gift from mother to child, and the raven was the bird of her birthday-saint. Little things that she never discussed with other Kel, because they wouldn’t understand.

“My apologies,” Jedao said promptly enough. “In any case, with the officers we need something bigger. We’ve already made an example of Vidona Diaiya –”

“That was ordinary discipline!”

“Don’t let go.”

Her fingers clenched around the luckstone, then relaxed.

“If it had been to our advantage to save her for future use, I might have advised that instead,” Jedao said. “But that wasn’t the case. No, we need a new target.”

Target?
They were out of hostiles for the moment, unless he wanted her to order up more. Where was he going with this?

“We can’t demonstrate on the Fortress because that’s what we’re trying to persuade the commanders we can do in the first place,” Jedao said, “so we’ll have to demonstrate on our swarm. We can afford to lose a moth. Diaiya was going to be my expendable, but as it so happens she torched herself before I could make use of her that way.” His voice was utterly level.

Cheris had a creeping feeling at the back of her neck. How had she forgotten he was a madman? “Diaiya disobeyed orders and broke formation, that’s one thing,” she said, “but the other commanders have done nothing wrong. They don’t deserve to be toyed with.” Assuming he only meant to toy with them, which she had serious doubts about.

She was now remembering, too, his earlier comment about having a use for Diaiya, back when they’d selected her for the swarm. At the time it had slipped her mind as being nothing important. The knot in her gut told her she had been terribly, terribly wrong.

“We can’t afford any weaknesses when we go up against the Fortress,” Jedao said. “The swarm has to be ready to obey, and to believe in our methods, whatever they are, even if I’m involved. Not only did the heretics capture the hexarchate’s most celebrated nexus fortress, they had help. That kaleidoscope bomb wasn’t developed and manufactured overnight. In any case, to unite the swarm, we need them focused on an adversary. Framing one of your own commanders for heresy ought to do the trick.”

Cheris was speechless.

Jedao’s voice cracked without warning. “My gun. Where did I put my gun? It’s so dark.”

Cheris bit back a curse. This had to be a ploy, even though she couldn’t see what an undead general would be getting out of playing a bad joke. “Jedao,” she said, trying to sound composed and failing, “there’s no need –”

Not only was the shadow darker than she remembered it being, Jedao’s eyes had flared hell-bright, and the entire room was heavy with darkness like tongues of night licking inward from some unseen sky. Cheris’s mouth went dry as sand. She’d seen combat before, she’d fought before, and all she could do was freeze and stare like a soldier just out of academy.

Where was her chrysalis gun? There it was at her waist, that unmoving weight. She had to reach for it, had to unfreeze –

“General.” Now Jedao was coolly imperious. “I don’t recognize you, but your uniform is irregular. Fix it.”

She had no idea what had caused him to go mad in the first place, no one did, so she had no idea if he was going mad again. She lost a precious second wondering inanely if snapping a salute would mollify him, then unfroze and fumbled for the chrysalis gun. Just in case.

The nine-eyed shadow whipped around behind her in defiance of all the laws of geometry it had obeyed until now, and then she knew she was really in trouble. All that time she had spent reading up on her swarm’s high officers and what intelligence they had on the enemy – some of it should have been spent researching
Jedao
.

“You shouldn’t be standing still,” he said. His voice was casual, as though he addressed an old friend. “They’ll get you if you stand still. You should always be moving. And you should also be shooting back.”

“Shooting who?” she said, struck by the awful thought that this was how he had gone crazy at Hellspin Fortress.

The shadow moved slowly, slowly, pacing her. Perhaps if she kept him talking she could buy time, even figure out what was going through his mind.

Jedao didn’t seem to hear her. “If you keep waiting, all the lanterns will go out,” he said, his voice gone eerily soft, “and then they’ll be able to see you but you won’t be able to see them. It’ll be dark for a very long time.”

Lanterns. The Lanterners? Hellspin Fortress? Or some coincidence of imagery?

The gun was in her hand. She aimed at the shadow, but it was too fast. If she fired, would it send up alarms? She didn’t want to start a panic in her command moth for no reason. She nerved herself and did it anyway, but the shadow anticipated her and whipped out of the way. The gray-green bolt sparked and dissipated harmlessly against the floor. Her next attempts fared no better. Cheris wished the Nirai had warned her that shooting Jedao wouldn’t be simple.

Despite the shadow’s movements, he didn’t sound like he noticed that she was trying to shoot him, either. “You brought a whole swarm here,” he said, voice rising. “They have no idea. It’s going to be a million dead all over again.”

If this kept up she was going to have to aim the gun at herself, terrible hangover or not. But then she’d drop the luckstone; there was still some chance this whole thing was an act. Then why wouldn’t her hands cooperate?

This would be much easier if she knew him well enough to tell whether this was an aggressively irresponsible mind game on his part, or a genuine sign of insanity.
Stop hesitating,
she told herself angrily. She knew better than to dither like this.

Jedao fell silent. In spite of herself, Cheris hoped that Jedao was done testing her, that he would call the game off. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was about to ask him when his voice started up again. This time he sounded unnervingly young, half an octave higher, like a first-year cadet.