Revenant Gun

by Yoon Ha Lee

  Cheris could see it on the scan suite, painted in exaggerated colors: the artificially generated areas of low pressure, the menacing swirl of unstable air masses. “We can’t let them do that again,” she said, “not so close to the planet’s surface. If we can take the gravity cannon out of the equation, Inesser will have a chance to seize the upper hand.”

  At least Jedao still hadn’t triggered the threshold winnowers. Either she was right and he hesitated to commit a second massacre, or he hadn’t yet seen a good opportunity. She tried not to dwell on the second possibility. I hope you were right, Hemiola. Perhaps Jedao had lied to Hemiola—but whatever was going on, she would have to adapt to circumstances.

  “Take us in right up in the command moth’s face,” Cheris said. “I have an idea based on something Jedao did a very long time ago, which I hope he doesn’t remember.” In the meantime, she began programming the hold to expel its contents once she gave the command, which required overriding some of the safety protocols. She didn’t like running on so little margin—they’d gotten rid of things like extra suits and ecoscrubbers and so on—but face it, if she failed here none of that would matter.

  “If you insist,” 1491625 said.

  Despite the general tumult of the artificial hurricane, the fact that they were sticking close to the command moth’s flight path worked in their favor, as Jedao’s Tactical One rather naturally chose to fly through the eye of the storm. 1491625 darted past the shields, then maneuvered them adroitly until they were flying just ahead of the command moth. Their scan suite began squawking with possible collision alerts, which neither Cheris nor 1491625 bothered to silence.

  “Being in the path of the gravity cannon when it—”

  “I know,” Cheris said, more emphatically than she’d intended. “Prepare to get us the hell out of here when I dump our cargo.” She hit the command.

  The needlemoth opened up its cargo hold and released all the crates of variable-coefficient lubricant. It started out in liquid form. But upon impact, Cheris had programmed the lubricant to harden to a goopy cement. She hoped that the Jedao commanding the Revenant didn’t remember pulling this trick many lifetimes ago—

  The lubricant clung messily to the gravity cannon’s aperture, gumming it up. Cheris braced for a shot that never came. “It worked,” she said with relief.

  Except now Jedao’s swarm was alerted to their presence. “Hang on,” 1491625 said, flashing a grim dark red. “We’re about to have worse trouble than a little turbulence.”

  The Revenant and the other lead bannermoths saturated the area with scattergun fire. Ordinarily scatterguns were used to clear a large number of targets with low shielding. Cheris and 1491625 might only control one needlemoth, but the volume of fire posed a problem.

  1491625 did its best to dodge the incoming projectiles, which brightened the tactical display like a monsoon of fire. Cheris’s own background was in infantry, but she also had Jedao’s memories of service in the space forces. She could appreciate bravura piloting skills when she saw them.

  Unfortunately, their luck ran out. One moment, nothing; the next, the alarms screamed. “Engine hit,” 1491625 said at its reddest. “This is not a good angle of descent. I’ll try to land us near friendly troops, but...”

  Cheris bit back her retort; she preferred not to distract 1491625 when both their lives depended on its piloting skills. Instead, she kept an eye on scan. Complicating 1491625’s job was the fact that Jedao’s boxmoths had already landed troops in the city, and the bannermoths were busy laying down fire to clear the drop zones of hostiles. To keep apprised of the situation on the ground, she patched herself in to Inesser’s ground forces via her augment and felt the familiar disorientation as a map wrote itself in her mind by hijacking her proprioception.

  Inesser had been as good as her word. Cheris had full access to the Protectorate’s reconnaissance and status reports, including the locations where Jedao’s troops had landed. She frowned as she studied the movements of Jedao’s infantry. Was he doing what she thought he was doing with those unorthodox formations...?

  “Oh no,” Cheris breathed. “You miscalculated.” And he was going to need her help to fix the formations if they were to have the intended effect, except he didn’t realize it. She had to intervene.

  Meanwhile, 1491625 was swearing to itself in strident reds and oranges and probably even the infrared, although she couldn’t see it. Its grippers moved more subtly than her eyes could follow as it attempted to ameliorate the needlemoth’s plummeting descent.

  Time to make a call. “Ajewen Cheris to Brigadier General Kel Raika,” she said, hoping that Raika would answer. “This is an emergency.”

  “Four minutes and fifty seconds to impact,” 1491625 said mirthlessly. “I hope that meat body of yours is tough enough to survive this, Cheris.”

  Seconds ticked past. The violet sky outside was aswirl with debris and wisps of obscuring cloud. Beneath them, Terebeg 4’s capital glimmered with the telltale signs of exotic shielding, hazed where Jedao’s forces had breached it. The city’s designers had laid it out in the shape of a nautilus shell, and in less desperate circumstances the mathematics of the pattern would have pleased Cheris.

  At last Raika answered. “I was warned by the protector-general that you might be involved, Cheris,” Raika said. Her voice was so exaggeratedly pleasant that Cheris could tell she was suppressing impatience. “I assume I have you to thank for the redoubled orbital bombardment.”

  “Yes,” Cheris said, “but that’s not what I’m calling about. Estimate that I’m going to crash at”—she passed on the coordinates that 1491625 provided her. “I hope to join up with your ground units. I’m going to need you to reorganize these units”—she rattled off the list—“into some unorthodox formations in support of the primary objective.”

  Raika’s brief silence spoke volumes. “I have my orders,” she said, in that particular tone that was Kel for I wish I could tell you to fuck off but this is my lot.

  “Cheris,” 1491625 flashed, “we’re about to crash!”

  “Thank you,” Cheris said automatically, whether to Raika or 1491625 she wasn’t sure, and regretted it as they hurtled into the ground.

  The needlemoth’s screaming alerts abruptly shut off as the world exploded around her.

  “IT’S CHERIS,” KUJEN snapped when the payload of cement or whatever-it-was appeared out of nowhere and clogged up the shear cannon. “No one else would have used that snakefucking trick with the lubricant. I didn’t think anyone even remembered that incident.”

  Jedao had no idea what incident Kujen was referring to, but he had the presence of mind to order a barrage of scattergun fire. Thank you, he wished Cheris for saving him from having to devastate the city with the shear cannon, even if he had no choice but to try to shoot her presumably stealthed moth down. He also, of necessity, called Engineering and asked for an estimate of how long until they could get the shear cannon cleaned up. Engineering replied that they had servitors on the problem, but applying solvent while flitting through the atmosphere was a nontrivial proposition.

  “We’ll have to act before Cheris can interfere further,” Kujen said. “It’s time for the winnowers.”

  Fuck, Jedao thought in agony. He had been so careful, had checked all the formations with Hemiola. Yet here was Kujen, manifestly still alive and unaffected by the formations Jedao had set in motion. What had gone wrong?

  He could buy a few more minutes and no more. After that, suicide was his only option. “Communications,” Jedao said, struggling to keep his heaviness of heart from his voice, “open a line to Commander Nihara Keru.” And then: “Weapons, have the winnower teams on standby.”

  CHERIS DIDN’T BLACK out immediately, which was the one piece of good luck in this whole affair. Her entire body felt as though it had been smashed to pieces, and the smell of smoke mingled unpleasantly with burnt metal. It wouldn’t surprise her if she’d broken one or more ribs. None of that mattered, however, if she co
uldn’t get the new orders through to the necessary ground troops.

  Amazingly, Raika hadn’t dropped the connection, even though she had to have other demands on her attention. “—still there? Ajewen Cheris?”

  “I’m alive,” Cheris rasped, and winced at the shooting pains in her jaw, which only made them worse. 1491625, hovering lopsidedly in the air, was digging through the needlemoth’s smashed cockpit for the first aid kit. “I need these orders for”—she concentrated to bring up the units’ numbers despite the execrable pounding in her head—“the following companies implemented immediately.” She rapped out the orders, including painstaking formation diagrams, despite the fact that her vision was swimming. I have to stay conscious long enough—

  Brief silence. “You’re asking Company 182-33 to swan-dive right into the middle of the hostiles. It’s a suicide run.”

  “They’ll have to hold out as long as possible,” Cheris said, not disagreeing.

  For a moment Cheris was afraid that Raika would hang up on her. Then Raika said, “The orders have been given. I’ll buy you what time I can. And I’ve got a team on the way to extract you.”

  “Thank you,” Cheris said, and passed out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JEDAO HAD JUST unwebbed to lunge for Dhanneth’s gun when the entire command center sheened white and silver. Splinters and pale streaking light arced through the walls. Alarms howled.

  Kujen-Inhyeng yelped as Jedao pivoted and tackled him, slamming him to the floor. Jedao pinned him there. A strike with the blade of his hand caused Kujen’s head to snap back. The blow didn’t kill. He hadn’t meant it to.

  He heard Talaw’s voice and Dhanneth’s, a commotion of panicked Kel. None of the words meant anything. All that mattered was holding Kujen in place so the formation attack, now active, could sever Kujen from his anchor and destroy him forever.

  Then it happened. A sudden overbearing weight in his mind. Moths, stars, a surfeit of shadows. Jedao would have screamed if he’d been able to. He couldn’t, though; couldn’t stop his body from releasing Inhyeng’s.

  His body stood. His mouth smiled. “Major Dhanneth,” his voice said. “Kneel.”

  Dhanneth knelt directly before Jedao in a parody of the exchange of pleasure they’d once known.

  “Dhanneth, no—” He knew he was speaking only in the arena of the mind, that only Kujen could hear him. Yet the words tore out of him anyway.

  He couldn’t tell whether the ugly swollen triumph that thrilled through him was his or Kujen’s.

  “Is this so different from the things you had him do for you in bed?” Kujen said, in a voice that only Jedao could hear.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Jedao said. Pleas wouldn’t move Kujen. He tried anyway.

  “He never wanted this, you know.”

  “What do you mean?” Jedao asked, even though he knew the answer would hurt him.

  “I programmed him to be loyal to you,” Kujen said. “I thought you might need a friend. Or a lover, as it turned out. But somewhere in a corner of his mind he remembers who he was, and what’s been done to him, and that he hates you.”

  Dhanneth was still kneeling, his eyes hot with mingled fear and desire.

  “No,” Jedao whispered.

  The Revenant was roaring fit to slaughter stars. Imprisoned in his own body, Jedao heard it more clearly than ever before, and other things besides. The humming of the moons and planets in their orbits, and the litanies of the stars. The songweave of moths and more than moths: other creatures besides, whole ecologies that dwelled in gate-space and intersected with invariant space, where humans lived, only when monstrous engines like the threshold winnower invited them in. Two of the winnowers yet survived Inesser’s assaults: monstrosities crouched near them, waiting.

  Kujen’s shadow-of-moths existed simultaneously in gate-space. And it was inside him. Kujen was inside him, manifesting in Jedao’s dreamspace. He appeared as the man he must have been once upon a lifetime. In that place dominated by the carcasses of stars, he rounded on Jedao.

  Jedao’s heart split down the middle at how beautiful he was. Jedao had assumed that Inhyeng had been modded into Kujen’s old shape, but whatever the reason, the two men, while both extraordinary, could never have been mistaken for each other. Kujen—the real Kujen—had a dancer’s build, and curly brown hair framing a face of such subtle angles it was almost feminine, and eyes the color of amber, the one point of similarity with Inhyeng.

  Everything came to Jedao in double vision. Equations he had once puzzled over revealed themselves to him in lattices of starfire clarity. People diminished to flicker-motes in the tapestry of years. Jedao could have lingered forever, entranced by the world as Kujen saw it; would have given anything to share it forever, except—

  Kujen rose in a fury, despite the silver lances piercing him. “How did you do it?” he demanded, except Jedao knew better than to answer. “Submit to me,” he said, “and I may yet forgive a great many things. It’s nothing that can’t be repaired. Your predecessor, too, had a taste for treachery.” Nevertheless, he spoke rapidly; he had to be aware of how little time he had left.

  “Fuck you,” Jedao said in the language of moths, even as he yearned toward that vision, the crystalline precision of a mind vaster and older than his.

  Kujen heard him. “That could also be arranged,” he said with sweet malice. “If you want to beg for it, if you want to be made so you enjoy begging for it—hell, if you want me to beg for it, I’m flexible. There’s nothing I haven’t seen, and nothing I won’t do.”

  The lances brightened; Kujen’s face twisted.

  All I have to do is endure, Jedao thought, in agony himself. Was the pain a side-effect, or an echo, of whatever Kujen was feeling from the formation attack? A promising sign if so.

  “You won’t have another chance. I can give you what no one else can give you. If you turn me down, if you let me die, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life—”

  Jedao heard someone cry out in rage. His throat hurt as though an animal had scratched its way out. “I’m your gun, Kujen, but that’s not all I am!”

  (He knew it was a lie. In all the quicksand years remaining to him, he was never going to be anything more than another of Kujen’s dolls.)

  The lances finished their work. The chain that bound Kujen to Jedao, his current anchor, was severed. With it went the life Kujen had clung to for so long.

  Even then Kujen wasn’t done. “Oh, child,” he said. His voice was so matter-of-fact that Jedao’s hackles rose. “No one else will ever love you.” After that he was gone.

  ALL AT ONCE the lances dissipated and left Jedao blinking, near-blinded by the afterimages. Gate-space receded. The command center with its hectic alerts and frantic security personnel and raised voices reminded him of the importance of restoring order.

  Inhyeng was sprawled before Jedao, sobbing with pain. Jedao put Inhyeng back in a lock, knee in his back, now that he had control of himself again. “I give—” Inhyeng said between gasps. “Parole. Please. He’s—he’s gone.”

  “I know that,” Jedao said in a scoured-out voice. He had known it would come to this at the end. “You’re free now.”

  He didn’t let up, in case Inhyeng tried something. Bad odds for the other man, but you never knew. Nothing usual had happened today. He had good reflexes, but best not to take chances.

  “Communications,” Jedao said. “Commander Talaw. Tender my apologies to Protector-General Inesser and transmit the null banner. I am offering my surrender. While you’re at it, blow up the remaining fucking winnowers as an earnest of my good faith. Do it however you like, I’m not fussed.”

  Talaw didn’t waste time asking questions and immediately snapped to. Dhanneth, however, understandably looked wild around the eyes. “We’re your Kel,” he said. “They’re vulnerable. You can defeat Inesser. You fought for us. Let us fight for you.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Jedao said, more harshly than he’d intended. “The point o
f this was to return all of you to your people. To the true Kel. I don’t care what they do with me.”

  “Sir, a surrender should more properly be—”

  “Fuck propriety,” Jedao said. Inhyeng made a sound at the back of his throat that might have been laughter. “Besides, the commander already has things in hand.”

  “Well,” Inhyeng said with the refined accent that Jedao knew so well. “All that planning and Kujen finally fucked up.” He did not seem to care who heard him. “Created the perfect general, the perfect gun, and undid himself by giving the gun a soul.”

  “I don’t believe in souls,” Jedao said.

  “I don’t either,” Inhyeng said, confusingly. “How did you do it, by the way? We were so careful to avoid the weapons that could hurt him. The moths’ formation didn’t—”

  “You were looking at the fucking moths,” Jedao said. But Kujen had been Nirai, and he was betting that Inhyeng was too. “Next time look at the fucking people.”

  Inhyeng stiffened. “The infantry. I should have realized those landing sites made no sense—if Inesser was your real target.”

  Jedao didn’t say anything.

  Inhyeng hacked up another laugh. “If you put any more pressure on that joint, you’re going to break it.”

  “Don’t think I’m not tempted,” Jedao said. “I don’t trust you. With enough joints broken, you won’t be able to fight me. Not physically, anyway. But you’re free. You’re one of the reasons I did this.”

  “Me?” Inhyeng said. “I’m no one.” Tears were running down his face in great messy streaks. “He didn’t care about people the way you or I understand the word, but he was... interested in you. He meant for you to accompany him forever.”

  “I never wanted to live forever,” Jedao said. But Kujen had given him a body that repaired itself. He expected dying would take extra effort. For a moment, he was enraptured again by the edifices of thought that Kujen had held in his mind like a temple. He could trace his way through parts of them even now. “Well, it’s too late now.”