by Yoon Ha Lee
“Don’t yell at the major,” Jedao said quickly when Kujen peered at his hand. “It was my idea.”
“Not that,” Kujen said, and riffled through the unused portion of the deck until he came up with a card. He showed it to Jedao: the Deuce of Gears, silver on a black field, like everything else in the Gears suit.
Jedao was watching Dhanneth out of the corner of his eye. Dhanneth’s shoulders tensed at the sight of the card as though—as though what? It wasn’t even a particularly unlucky card. “Cog in the machine” was what it connoted.
“Not familiar?” Kujen said.
“Should it be?” Jedao said, continuing to watch Dhanneth in his peripheral vision.
Kujen made a moue. “That’s gone too? You took a variant of it as your emblem, once upon a time.”
“Nirai colors, though?”
“You registered yours in gold gears on a red field,” Kujen said. “Quite fetching. You used to show me a whole routine of stupid card tricks based around it.”
That made more sense: Shuos colors. He didn’t know what to make of the card tricks, though, which he didn’t remember either, so he didn’t respond to that part. Certainly he couldn’t imagine himself amusing a hexarch, of all people, with something as trivial as magic tricks. “Should we switch it back to Nirai colors, considering...?”
“Nice thought,” Kujen said, “but it’ll be more intimidating in its historical form, so you ought to stick to the gold and red. I’ve scheduled a meeting with the Kel. Conference in person with your staff heads, tactical group commanders, and infantry colonels, plus the rest of the commanders in the rear. You’ll be able to hold virtual conferences with them after we get underway, of course.”
Jedao was halfway convinced that all that existed of the universe was this suite. If he stepped outside, he would fall into an infinite cushioning darkness.
The conviction must have shown in his face. Kujen said, “I wasn’t keeping you prisoner out of spite. Given your notoriety, I thought it best for you to be kept away from random Kel, or assassins for that matter, until you got your bearings. Any idea what you’re saying to your officers?”
“Yes,” Jedao lied. He had a speech; had even run it by Dhanneth. The original one had been no good, so he’d scrambled to write an appropriate substitution.
“I still think you should wear your medals, sir,” Dhanneth said.
Jedao had originally demurred on the grounds that the last thing a mass murderer should flaunt was a bunch of medals for things he couldn’t remember doing. If Dhanneth was bringing it up in front of Kujen, however, he felt strongly enough about the matter to corner him into it. Jedao looked at him with renewed respect.
Kujen figured it out immediately. “The major is right, you know. The Kel will respond better if they see that you take pride in your rank.”
That was perilously close to what Dhanneth had said, although Jedao hadn’t believed him. “I didn’t see any medals when I searched the drawers,” Jedao said, “and I wouldn’t know how to put them in the right order.”
“Your uniform does that for you,” Kujen said. “It reads the record out of your profile. No, really. Direct it to enter full formal, medals included.”
Jedao did so and was treated to the bizarre sight of his uniform changing, down to the sudden appearance of rows of medals beneath the general’s wings and Shuos eye. “I bet this makes for some interesting pranks,” he said.
“You’re not the first person to think of that. There’s some crypto involved so that people can’t randomly impersonate people, but the augment takes care of that so you don’t have to think about it.” Kujen looked Jedao over critically, then nodded. “It’ll do.”
After an abbreviated breakfast, they set out for the conference. “Try to keep up,” Kujen said, “since you’re not used to variable layout.”
“Variable what?”
“It’ll make more sense when you experience it.”
Jedao wasn’t sure what he had expected the halls of a Nirai station to look like. Gray and sterile, perhaps. He should have figured that a Nirai station hosting the Nirai hexarch himself would pay tribute to Kujen’s love of fine things. Ink paintings on heavy silk depicted birds in migration, only when he looked more closely, the black strokes that formed the birds’ wings were composed of tiny, impressionistic moths. The halls abounded with displays of orreries and astrolabes, abacuses with beads of jade and obsidian. And they were walking on carpet, iridescent gray with patterns on it in paler pearly gray, with pile so deep that if you lost a toe in it you’d never see it again.
More alarming was the fact that they were walking down an infinite corridor, which had no apparent end or, when Jedao glanced back, beginning either. He couldn’t see far into the distance, as though moisture hazed the air. The others’ unconcern told him this was nothing new, but he didn’t like it.
That wasn’t all. Jedao had a sudden sense of the whereness of the station and everything in it, based not in vision but on concentrations of mass. Kujen and Dhanneth appeared in this othersense just as they did in Jedao’s ordinary sight. Their surroundings, though, were confusingly knotted, as though spacetime itself was warped between two disparate points.
As a test, he slowed and closed his eyes. The othersense didn’t go away. In fact, now that he knew he had it, he couldn’t make it go away. Kujen and Dhanneth continued forward. He examined the rest of his surroundings—he could sense in all directions, a handy trick—and began detecting other moving masses that he suspected were either people or, for the smaller, denser ones, servitors.
Better not reveal this to anyone else until he knew more about where it had come from. He was pretty sure standard-issue humans didn’t randomly sense mass. He hurried to rejoin the other two.
At last they arrived at an enormous pair of doors. Jedao could have sworn that they materialized between one step and the next. The doors sheened black with a faint silver scatter as of stars, marked with the Nirai voidmoth emblem in brighter silver. They slid open at Kujen’s approach, unnervingly noiseless.
Jedao didn’t pause or look left or right, up or down, as he followed Kujen across the threshold, despite the way his back prickled. He had to get this right. There was no other option. Behind him, he heard Dhanneth’s ragged breathing, but he didn’t dare look around to see what the matter was.
Kujen had led them into a hall with a high arched ceiling and pillars of black veined with gold. More than the lanterns with their trapped, frantic moth-shapes throwing irregular shadows across the dark walls, Jedao noticed the Kel commanders, a row about ten across and ten deep.
The Kel commanders had, almost as one, knelt before Kujen. Jedao’s othersense was momentarily dizzied by the coordinated movement. Although the commanders’ attention should have been focused on the hexarch, he couldn’t escape their consternation. Some of it was directed at him, revulsion so strong he could feel its pressure. But some of them were eyeing Dhanneth with unambiguous shock. Did they consider Dhanneth to have sold out by serving him?
The temperature in the hall should have been comfortable, but all Jedao could think of was winter, bleak winds in a world frozen dark. There were black-and-gold uniforms everywhere, including his own. He craved any splash of color as relief from the monotony of all the black.
“I trust everyone slept well,” Kujen said. The light in his eyes suggested that he knew exactly what effect this setup was having on the Kel. “I promised you a new general. Here he is.” He waved a hand, indicating that everyone should stand.
Jedao hadn’t counted on such an abrupt introduction. The six staff heads in front exchanged stony glances. The commanders had faces as still and blank as ice. Jedao had no idea why he was smiling, or what to say, even if he’d memorized that speech beforehand. Not saying anything wasn’t an option, either, even in the face of their muted hostility. So he opened his mouth—
“You know my name,” he said with a bite of humor. “You don’t seem to have done a very good job executi
ng me.”
His gaze was drawn immediately to the commander he recognized as Kel Talaw. Talaw was a stocky alt whose eyes narrowed as they stared back at Jedao. And Talaw’s hostility wasn’t muted at all. Their face blazed with naked hatred even as the entire hall plunged stone-silent.
Fuck, Jedao thought. What had possessed him to say that? Especially in that tone of voice?
He couldn’t take it back. He couldn’t apologize. That would only make him look weak. Better to be a callous bastard than to lose credibility.
Besides, there was no getting around the fact that everyone knew more about Hellspin Fortress than he did. Trying to win the Kel over with charm would have been disastrous anyway. At least they had no idea what was going on inside his head. He would just have to lie too well for them to deduce how out of his depth he was. The sad thing was that the lie was better for morale.
Bad sign: Kujen’s eyes had crinkled faintly in approval. The expression only lasted a fraction of a second, but Jedao had been watching for his reaction.
Fine. Jedao let his smile narrow. “I understand there was an earlier failure of discipline in the hexarch’s direction.” Stupid to pretend it hadn’t happened; might as well address it head-on. “If you feel like betraying someone, you can start with me instead.” Great. He had just challenged all the commanders to duels or the next best thing, and a lot of the Kel excelled at dueling, but he couldn’t stop. “We’re going to be fighting other Kel. Is this going to be an issue?”
He wished he could blame the uniform for messing with his head, but he knew better.
Commander Nihara Keru raised her head: Tactical Two. The plainness of her face was offset by her startling pale gray eyes. Everyone else in the front row had brown eyes. “I would speak, sir,” she said. Her voice, high and crisp, had its own lilt of humor.
She might be the first person besides Kujen who didn’t hate him, not that Jedao had met many people yet. That also made her a potential threat. Don’t pause, don’t pause, don’t pause. “Commander Nihara Keru,” he said. Her eyebrows flicked up: she hadn’t been sure he’d know her name, although he had made a point of memorizing names and faces. “Say what’s on your mind.”
Talaw’s mouth twisted. The rest of the commanders, less senior than Talaw or Nihara, were grimly attentive. For that matter, the staff heads looked even more uncomfortable. Jedao was trying to determine whether Talaw and Nihara disliked each other. If so, his life had gotten more interesting.
“Sir,” Nihara said, “what are our objectives? This is a large swarm, but it’s an immense galaxy.”
Jedao already liked her. “Our purpose is calendrical warfare to reunify the hexarchate so it can stand against incursions from foreigners,” he said, meeting her eyes. He was lying about this, too. Kujen’s strategic notes had suggested that he cared about the restoration of the hexarchate’s historical boundaries, but, weirdly, not so much about the occasional trifling invasion. Jedao would have to figure out what that implied later.
He continued talking. “We will start with attacks to realign the calendar in the Fissure”—the border region contested by the Compact and some smaller states, where the high calendar had lost its dominance—“and expand from there. There’s only this one swarm to start with, but I killed an entire army of you once and I got back up, and you’re the fucking military faction. I say we have a chance. But it’s a better chance if we’re all pointed in the same direction.”
There was a stir at that. He couldn’t believe he’d just joked about massacring Kel, except at this point there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t have believed about himself.
Nihara interrupted by laughing. Talaw’s mouth tightened in disapproval. “All right, sir,” Nihara said. “That’s fair.”
“Charmed,” Jedao said. “Major, if you’d bring up the map—”
Dhanneth did as requested.
Jedao didn’t expect that his overview of their target, Isteia System, held many surprises for his audience. The system used to house a major mothyard, specifically for the construction of cindermoths, before falling victim to sabotage. Kujen wanted the swarm not only to destroy it before it resumed production, but to do so on the anniversary of Kel Command’s demise. Isteia was expected to be on high alert. If they could carry off a victory on that day—the more spectacular the better—the resulting calendrical spike would, according to both Kujen and everyone in Doctrine, swing the disputed territory back to Kujen’s preferred calendar. Jedao had snooped on some of the mathematics for the hell of it, querying the local grid for help with the computer algebra system. The junior Doctrine officer whose work he’d spot-checked had looked as if he’d rather arm-wrestle a tiger.
Jedao finished going over intelligence on antimissile defenses and suppressed a sigh. Lecturing statues would have been more fun. The statues might have been friendlier.
“We have a few advantages,” Jedao said, not because he thought they hadn’t figured it out, but because he believed in clarity. “First, our mothdrives look different on scan, and that will throw them. We can take advantage of that during the first engagement. Second, the Compact and the Protectorate are currently at peace, if an uneasy one, and the vast majority of you Kel ended up with one or the other. They won’t expect a Kel swarm to suddenly turn up and fight them. That’s something we only get to confuse them with once, but since it’s lying around it’d be stupid not to use it.”
One of the junior commanders asked about travel formations, which was a good question. “No,” Jedao said, “we won’t be traveling in formation to begin with. We don’t want them to know for sure that we’re Kel. Uncomfortable as it will be, it’s more important to preserve surprise.”
“Sir,” Talaw said. “If we’re attacked en route, what then?”
Another good question. Jedao was relieved that Talaw’s hatred of him didn’t preclude them from participating usefully in the briefing. “We’ll be avoiding the known listening posts to the greatest extent possible,” Jedao said, “but the beautiful thing about space is that it’s difficult to get pinned. If someone shows up, we sprint away. Our mothdrives will allow us to outrun most of what’s out there. It’s ignominious, but the calendrical spike takes priority. We’re not here to get into random brawls, especially considering our limited resources. You’ll get the order to fight in formation when the time comes and not before.”
Would Talaw argue with him for the sake of it? But all they said was, “I concede your logic, sir.”
Jedao was starting to like Talaw as well. So what if they hated him? It might be good for him to have someone to keep him from getting sloppy.
“All right,” Jedao said. “Infantry assignments. Although we have some boxmoths for personnel, I have assigned complements of infantry to some of the bannermoths and to the shearmoth to accommodate the regiments.” He smiled at the senior infantry colonel, Kel Muyyed. “I expect infantry to drill formations while we’re in transit.” Dhanneth had radiated grudging approval when Jedao came up with that, although he hadn’t come out and said so. “Per standard procedure, refuse the primary pivots during drill.” Leaving primary pivots unfilled would prevent the formations’ effects from activating. He doubted the colonels needed the reminder of the precaution, but Muyyed and the junior colonel nodded sharply.
Talaw again. “Do you intend an infantry assault in this first engagement, sir?” Skepticism.
“No,” Jedao said, “but it doesn’t do to get out of practice, just in case.” At some point they might have to take and hold territory; messy business if so. He’d rather deal with a fast raid than a protracted siege, or worse, planetary warfare. But the infantry were Kel, too. Giving them something to do would help them feel involved. “Anything else?”
No one else had any questions they wanted to admit to.
“Hexarch,” Jedao said, and bowed. People stiffened. He must have picked the wrong bow, but if Kujen wasn’t going to behead him for it, he didn’t much care. “I’m done.”
Kujen said,
“I have no objections to the timetable you’ve laid out. If anyone has other questions, submit them through the usual channels.”
Jedao had no idea how “the usual channels” worked. Presumably Dhanneth could help him with that. Kujen was already striding toward the doors. Jedao remembered to salute the Kel, feeling horrible for them, then followed. Dhanneth hurried after him.
They could have been walking back through the same bizarre endless hallway with its extravagant ink paintings, except the walls suddenly opened up into an antechamber. The pale light revealed people working at terminals or banks of mysterious instruments. All of the people wore Nirai black-and-silver, in inconsistent styles of clothing: here a dress enlivened by a silver-mesh wrap, there a sleek tunic over trousers with a staggering number of pockets. A few of the Nirai glanced up at Kujen’s entrance, but no one bowed, or spoke to him, or did much to acknowledge that a hexarch had entered. In fact, several of them were arguing loudly over anomalies on a contour graph.
Kujen eyed Jedao, then snorted. “I’m not a Rahal, Jedao. I don’t feel this pressing emotional need to scrape people off the floor wherever I go.”
“I don’t believe you,” Jedao muttered.
Kujen had good hearing. “No one would get anything done around here if I insisted on that,” he said. “We have a schedule. Anyway, I wanted to show you your command moth.” Kujen made a gesture Jedao thought he could replicate with practice, and part of the far wall ceased to be visible.
The wall had either become a window or a massive display. The shearmoth hung there against a backdrop of stars. Knowing Kujen, the fact that it was attractively framed between two nebulae, a small blue-violet one and a larger one with interesting pink swirls, was deliberate. It looked even more impressive at this level of detail than it had when Kujen had shown him the original image: swept-back wings and careful curves, a triangular profile reminiscent of those of the bannermoths. He recognized the array of frontal protrusions that projected the shearmoth’s deadliest weapon, and the one for which it had been named, the shear cannon. Jedao longed to reach through the void and touch one of the protrusions, except he was afraid he’d leave smudges on the pristine surface.